OF 


OODB 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

Professor  Henry  J.  Quayle 


PRESENTED  BY 

Mrs  Fannie  Q.  Paul 
Mrs  Annie  Q*   ^kHey 
Mrs  Elizabeth  Q.  Flowers 


AFRICA    OF    TO-DAY 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


THE  COMING  CHINA,  320  pages. 
With  49  illustrations         $1.50  ne/ 

In  Preparation 

SIBERIA-RUSSIA 
CANADA  MEXICO 

A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO.,  Chicago 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2007  witii  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


littp://www.arcliive.org/details/africaoftodayOOgoodiala 


Copyright,  Underwood  &"  Underwood,  iV.  F. 

Grand  Avenue  of  Rams 
One  of  the  southern  approaches  to  the  temple  oj  Karnak,  Thebes 


AFRICA  OF  TO-DAY 


BY 


JOSEPH    KING    GOODRICH 

Sometime  Professor  in  the  Imperial 
Government  College,  Kyoto 

AUTHOR  OF   "the  COMING  CHINA" 


WITH    30   ILLUSTRATIONS    FROM 
PHOTOGRAPHS     AND     ONE     MAP 


CHICAGO 

A.   C.   McCLURG    &    CO. 

1912 


COPYRIGHT  ,     I  9  I  2 
BY    THE    PLIMPTON    PRESS 


PUBLISHED    MARCH, 1912 


Entered  at  Slalioners'  Hall,  London,  England 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


THE •PLIMPTON  •PRESS 

[  W  •  D  •  O] 
NORWOOD  •MASS*  U<S -A 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction ix 

CHAPTER 

I.  Africa  of  Fable i 

II.  Africa  as  the  Dark  Continent  and  its 
Emergence  into  Light  :  Missionary 
Enterprises  Briefly  Touched  Upon  .    .      17 

III.  Northern  Africa 32 

IV.  The    Peoples    and   Tribes    of    Northern 

Africa 49 

V.  The  Sahara:  The  Desert,  the  Oases,  the 

Inhabitants,  the  Life 64 

VI.  Egypt:  The  Mysterious  Land  of  Ancient 

Days 80 

Vn.   Egypt:   The  Land  We  Now  Know    ...      94 

VEIL   The    Nile  :     Historical,    Legendary, 

Picturesque no 

EX.  Central  Africa 127 

X.  Eastern  Africa 144 

XI.  Western  Africa 161 

XII.  South  Africa 190 

XIII.  The  Blacks  in  Africa 218 

XTV.  Everybody's  Africa 233 

V 


VI  CONTENTS 

XV.  America's  Relations  with  Africa.    Africa 

IN  THE  Future 250 

XVI.   White    Man's    Africa    and    the    African 

Islands 267 

XVII.   "Cape  to  Cairo" 285 


Bibliography 301 

Index 307 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Grand  Avenue  of  Rams Frontispiece 

The  Beginning  of  the  Nile facing  page  8 

Blacks  from  the  Equatorial  Plains  Climbing  a  Moimtain  i8 

Victoria  Falls,  Middle  Zambesi  River         .      .       .      .       .  24 

The  Palace  at  Fez 38 

Native  prisoners  under  Arab  Guards 54 

Picturesque  Ruins  of    the  old  Royal  Palace  at  Zanzibar  .  72 

The  Ramesseum,  Thebes 86 

On  the  Shoulder  of  the  Great  Sphinx 92 

Coffee  Picking  in  British  East  Africa 104 

The  Great  Dam  Across  the  Nile  at  Assuan,  Egypt     .      .  112 

The  Grotto-Temple  of  Abu  Simbel 122 

Hunting  the  Wild  Bull,  Depicited  on  the  Temple  Wall  of 

Rameses  III 124 

The  Beautiful  Water  Front  and  Harbour  of  Zanzibar        ,  136 

Native  Troops  at  Moschi,  East  Africa 144 

A  Group  of  Wachagga  People 148 

At  a  Station  on  the  Uganda  Railway 152 

A  "Country  Store"  in  the  Wilds  of  German  East  Africa  156 
East  African  Women  of  the  Meru  Tribe  Lined  up  for  a 

Dance 160 

Throne  Room  in  the  Sultan's  Palace  at  Zanzibar  .      .      .164 

Eternal  Snow  almost  on  the  Equator 182 

Street  in  Hanover,  Cape  Colony 192 

vii 


viii  ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  Town  Hall,  Durban,  Natal     ....    facing  page  196 
Immense   Precipitating   Vats    at   a   South   African    Gold 

Mine 204 

"  The  Compound  "  of  the  De  Beers  Diamond  Corporation    .  206 

Diamond-bearing  Blue  Rock 210 

The  Sultan  of  Morocco  on  the  March 232 

Native  Porters  Curing  Antelope  Meat  After  a  Hunt  .      .  244 

A  Typical  African  Jungle  Trail 272 

Victoria  Falls 290 

Map  of  Africa 300 


INTRODUCTION 

IF  this  book  were  to  be  restricted  to  a  description  of  any 
one  part  of  Africa,  or  if  it  were  intended  to  discuss  the  con- 
ditions existing  in  just  one  particular  section,  no  matter  how 
extensive,  and  to  treat  of  manners  and  customs  therein,  with 
an  account  of  the  native  population;  or  if  it  were  intended  to 
discuss  serially  the  various  parts  of  the  great  continent  in  a 
manner  even  approximating  to  careful  history,  an  apology 
to  the  intelligent  reading  pubUc  for  venturing  to  prefer  a 
claim  to  its  attention  would  be  in  order  here,  because  there 
are  already  so  many  books  at  the  reader's  service  to  give  him 
all  that  character  of  information.  But  it  seems  to  be  entirely 
proper  to  offer  to  the  public  a  sort  of  general  handbook  which 
shall  deal  with  some  of  the  problems  of  to-day  in  a  popular 
manner  that  may  be  entertaining  and  which,  it  is  believed, 
will  be  instructive.  Not  unnaturally,  however,  such  a  vol- 
ume should  be,  it  seems,  divided  into  parts  which  are  given 
to  the  topics  bearing  upon  one  particular  section  of  Africa, 
since  there  are  distinct  differences  between  the  questions  to 
be  answered  by  the  authorities  entrusted  with  the  responsi- 
bility of  exploiting  a  particular  section  and  similar  prob- 
lems that  face  oJQ&cials  in  another,  perhaps  distant,  part  of 
the  continent. 

There  is  such  an  enormous  mass  of  Uterature  treating  of 
Africa  historically,  much  of  which  still  possesses  a  peculiar 
charm  of  its  own,  although  now  centuries  old,  that  even  a 
synopsis  thereof  would  greatly  exceed  the  limitations  put 
upon  the  size  of  this  little  volume.  And  besides,  to  prepare 
such  an  epitome  would  be,  in  the  existing  circumstances,  a 
foolish  act  of  supererogation,  because  the  reader  who  is 
interested  in  that  topic — and  it  cannot  be  denied  that  it  is  an 


X  INTRODUCTION 

absorbingly  attractive  one — wdll  have  little  difficulty  in  ascer- 
taining, each  for  himself,  just  where  to  find  that  information 
which  treats  of  the  subject  from  the  point  of  view  that  he 
wishes  to  take;  whether  it  is  Africa  as,  after  all,  an  almost 
unknown  part  of  our  globe,  or  some  particular  section  which, 
in  the  process  of  discovery,  exploitation,  and  evolution,  has 
come  into  prominence,  either  ephemeral  or  with  a  greater 
or  less  measure  of  seeming  permanence.  Yet  it  should  be 
noted  here  that  there  is  no  satisfactory  bibliography  of 
Africa  at  this  moment  at  our  service;  not  even  one  which 
has  arranged  the  books  already  written  a  score  or  a  half- 
score  of  years  ago. 

It  seems,  however,  to  be  entirely  proper  that  there  should 
be  just  one  chapter  to  serve  as  a  sort  of  background  against 
which  shall  be  drawn  the  scenes  pourtraying  the  events  and 
setting  forth  the  conclusions  that  are  to  make  up  the  succeed- 
ing chapters;  and  in  this  conception  of  the  proprieties  the 
book  opens  with  a  chapter  entitled  "The  Africa  of  Fable" 
that  is  just  sufficiently  historical  to  give  those  readers  who 
have  not  a  thoroughly  comprehensive  view  something  to 
enable  them  to  understand  clearly  the  Africa  of  olden  times 
in  contrast  with  that  we  now  know.  To  this  chapter,  then, 
the  reader's  attention  is  drawn  in  order  that  there  may  not 
be  too  abrupt  a  plunge  into  the  discussion  of  problems  which 
are  interesting  in  themselves,  even  when  divorced  from  the 
history  of  Africa,  and  filled  with  suggestions  for  the  future. 
Each  day,  almost,  brings  to  our  attention  some  fresh  condi- 
tions in  that  great  continent,  or  transforms  so  radically 
those  which  had  before  existed  as  to  make  them  seem  to  be 
something  almost  new.  Just  at  the  present  time  the  atten- 
tion of  the  peoples  of  Europe  and  America  appears  to  be 
directed  more  particularly  towards  Eastern  Asia  and  Africa 
than  elsewhere,  but  with  respect  to  Asia  that  attention 
may  almost  be  said  to  be  concentrated  upon  China  and  to 
a  consideration  of  what  will  be  the  final  outcome  of  the 
changes  which  are  now  taking  place  there.  Some  discus- 
sion of  these  and  perhaps  a  rather  presimiptuous,  it  may 


INTRODUCTION  XI 

be  contended,  forecast  of  the  near  future  in  China  has  been 
made  in  the  author's  book  entitled  "The  Coming  China." 
But  even  before  that  volume  had  been  published  the  long- 
lived  disposition  to  discredit  every  effort  of  the  Chinese  to 
make  real  progress  along  lines  of  reform  and  substantial 
development  comparable  with  American  and  European 
standards  had  asserted  itself;  for  Mr.  C.  D.  Jameson,* 
whose  experience  and  long  residence  in  China  surely  justify 
us  in  saying  that  he  should  know  whereof  he  speaks,  expresses 
himself  in  a  way  diametrically  opposed  to  the  opinion  of  the 
present  author,  and  the  views  expressed  in  various  journals, 
most  of  them  British,  as  to  the  insincerity  of  China's  crusade 
against  the  opium  curse  —  yet  in  the  very  face  of  statistics 
which  were  accepted  by  all  sincere  friends  of  China  —  are 
but  added  evidence  in  this  regrettable  line. 

But  as  to  Africa,  it  is  hardly  correct  to  say  that  attention 
is  concentrated  upon  any  one  particular  section,  because^'the 
interests  of  Europeans  are  scattered  over  the  great  continent 
so  widely  that  a  very  broad  horizon  must  be  secured  if  an 
approximation  even  is  to  be  had  of  what  is  taking  place.  In 
many  regions  the  conditions  appear  to  be  marching  along 
quietly  towards  a  consummation  that  promises  nothing  but 
good  for  the  land,  the  natives,  and  the  immigrants;  while 
in  other  sections  the  state  of  affairs  leaves  sometimes  a  Uttle, 
at  other  times  a  great  deal,  to  be  desired  by  those  who  would 
like  to  see  the  development  of  Africa  proceed  along  the  best 
paths.  Again,  in  one  district  or  another,  the  state  of  affairs 
verges  perilously  near  to  that  acute  stage  when  it  would  seem 
as  if  European  Powers  must  inevitably  be  involved  in  war,  as 
was  the  case  but  a  few  months  ago  in  Morocco. 

We  in  the  United  States  have  but  a  small  direct  share  in 
what  is  taking  place  in  Africa;  perhaps  most  people  will  con- 
tend that,  beyond  a  friendly  interest  in  the  Republic  of 
Liberia,  we  have  no  special  interest  in  African  problems  at 
all.  Yet  such  a  view,  it  seems  to  this  writer,  evinces  an  indif- 
ference to  the  affairs  of  the  great  world,  of  which  we  have 
*  TJte  Outlook,  New  York,  July  15,  191 1. 


XU  INTRODUCTION 

become  in  recent  years,  more  than  ever  before,  an  active 
part,  that  is  not  compatible  with  our  social  and  industrial, 
our  domestic  and  international  aspirations.  That  some  of 
our  representative  men  have  expressed  an  opinion  of  Great 
Britain's  policy  in  Egypt  and  of  her  rights  there  which  must 
be  looked  upon  as  indicative  of  peculiar  views  stated  in 
doubtful  taste,  to  say  the  least  of  them,  hardly  relegates  all 
the  problems  of  Egyptian  exploitation  to  the  pigeonhole  of 
unimportant  matters.  If  Belgium  has  pursued  a  course  in 
her  Kongo  rubber-producing  regions  at  which  we  could  not 
consistently  have  pointed  the  finger  of  scorn  but  little  over 
a  half  century  ago,  that  is  no  excuse  for  indifference  now. 
So  too  with  problems  of  acquisition,  government,  develop- 
ment all  over  Africa.  In  themselves,  undoubtedly,  they  are 
no  part  of  our  aflfairs;  still,  in  the  interests  of  that  humanity 
for  which  we  profess  to  stand  stoutly  and  fearlessly,  we  must 
give  heed  to  what  is  going  on  in  all  quarters  of  Africa.  Not 
that  it  is  contemplated  for  a  moment  to  suggest  that  the 
United  States  has  the  faintest  right  to  interfere  in  the  conduct 
of  aflfairs  there  by  any  of  the  other  great  powers,  unless  it 
should  be  in  conjunction  with  other  nations  in  protest  against 
a  palpable  violation  of  the  simplest  laws  of  humanitarianism, 
but  merely  that  we  must  have  that  interest  in  the  aflfairs  of 
the  whole  world  which  our  recognised  importance  thrusts 
upon  us.  If  America's  "plethoric  purse"  is  to  be  drawn 
upon  to  help  finance  schemes  of  exploitation,  it  is  manifestly 
essential  that  those  who  hold  the  purse  strings  shall  be  well 
informed  as  to  the  uses  to  which  their  money  is  to  be  put. 

To  give  that  desirable  attention  in  a  somewhat  satisfactory 
manner,  at  least,  it  is  essential  that  our  information  should 
be  augmented,  even  if  it  is  in  but  a  small  measure,  for  it  can- 
not be  made  perfect  and  complete  until  Africa  has  absolutely 
ceased  to  be  in  any  sense  of  the  term  "The  Dark  Continent," 
and  that  is  not  likely  to  be  the  case  for  many  a  long  year  yet 
to  come.  It  is  with  the  hope  of  contributing  at  least  a  little 
towards  the  sum  of  such  desirable,  comprehensive  knowledge 
that  the  present  volume  is  offered  to  the  public.    Its  short- 


INTRODUCTION  XUl 

comings  are  manifest  almost  at  a  glance;  its  weaknesses  are 
certainly  more  distressing  to  the  workman  than  they  can 
possibly  be  to  anyone  of  those  for  whom  he  hopes  he  has 
wrought.  He  does  not  claim  to  have  visited  any  considerable 
part  of  the  great  continent  of  Africa,  but  he  has  little  hesita- 
tion in  saying  that,  if  the  field  wherein  he  has  presimied 
to  labour  were  closed  absolutely  to  all  save  those  who  know 
its  every  nook  and  comer  from  that  actual  personal  observa- 
tion which  comes  to  those  only  who  have  visited  a  country 
with  the  express  purpose  of  writing  its  history,  there 
would  never  yet  have  been  written  a  book  about  Africa  as 
a  unit,  and  it  is  extremely  improbable  that  such  a  volume,  by 
one  just  such  esoteric  author,  will  ever  be  prepared.  Even 
such  men  as  Livingstone,  Stanley,  Cecil  Rhodes,  not  to 
burden  the  reader  with  a  long  list  of  those  who  really  have 
travelled  extensively  in  parts  of  Africa,  could  not  have 
laid  claim  to  the  right  and  quaUfication  to  tell  us  of  that  con- 
tinent as  a  whole,  provided  the  condition  was  laid  upon  the 
author  that  he  should  speak  only  of  that  which  he  had  seen 
with  his  own  eyes,  heard  with  his  own  ears,  handled  with 
his  own  fingers,  and  felt  with  the  experiences  and  sensations 
of  his  own  body. 

It  requires  but  a  glance  at  the  earliest  known  accounts 
of  Africa,  whatever  may  be  their  source  as  to  language  or 
the  nationality  of  the  writers,  to  show  us  that  all  of  those 
explorers  depended  largely  upon  what  they  had  heard  from 
others;  and  by  no  means  does  it  follow  that  these  "others" 
always  were  competent  to  give  information  at  first  hand. 
And  this  comment  applies  with  equal  force,  almost,  to  the 
accounts  of  travels  given  by  later  visitors,  when  the  obliga- 
tion to  adhere  somewhat  closely,  at  any  rate,  to  fact  had  come 
to  be  recognised  as  a  necessary  quaUfication  of  the  would-be 
describer  or  historian,  and  when  myth  or  fable  had  to  be 
carefully  branded  as  such.  Yet  this  present  writer  claims, 
with  good  reason,  to  have  seen  some  things  with  his  own  eyes 
and  to  have  heard  very  much  more  from  men  who  have  taken 
part  in  the  making  of  history  for  many  parts  of  Africa,  Egypt, 


Xiv  INTRODUCTION 

the  Sudan,  North  Africa,  East  Africa,  the  Union  of  South 
Africa,  Rhodesia,  the  West  Coast,  the  northern  strip  of  the 
continent,  the  heart  of  "The  Dark  Continent,"  and  other 
portions.  When  he  has  taken  precise  information  from  the 
work  of  others,  due  credit  is  given  and  reference  made  so 
that  readers  may  confirm  the  citations,  if  they  wish,  and 
what  is  probably  better  yet,  may  pursue  their  investigations 
more  thoroughly,  as  to  some  particular  district  or  phase  of 
life,  than  it  has  been  possible  to  do  in  this  little  book  which 
has  condensed  into  a  few  hundred  pages  that  which  justly 
forms  a  whole  Ubrary  unto  itself. 

The  great  continent  derived  its  general  name  from  one  of 
its  ancient  provinces,  that  which  was  for  a  long  time  known 
as  Africa  Propria;  the  part  of  the  land  which  extends  in  a 
narrow  strip  along  the  Mediterranean  Sea.  This  great  body 
of  water  was  also  called  the  Hesperian  Sea,  from  the  word 
Hesper,  or  Vesper,  signifying  West;  it  was  known,  too,  as 
Mare  Magnum  ("Great  Sea")  and  Mare  Inferum  ("Lower," 
in  contradistinction  to  the  Black  Sea).  Africa  Propria 
reached  from  the  ancient  province  of  Mauretania  (its  farther 
coast  washed  by  the  Atlantic;  Morocco  is  a  part  of  it)  on  the 
west  to  Cyrenaica  in  Libya  (associated  wuth  the  name  of 
the  philosopher  Aristippus)  and  bordering  upon  Egypt, 
where  is  now  the  kingdom  of  Tunis  and  where  was  once  the 
seat  of  government  of  the  celebrated  Carthaginians.  The 
ancient  Greeks  spoke  of  Africa  as  Libya,  taking  the  name 
from  another  of  the  provinces,  the  desert  part  of  which 
marched  with  Egypt.  The  old  Arabs  gave  to  the  whole  con- 
tinent (that  is,  as  they  knew  it)  the  name  of  El-ber,  which 
signified  a  divided  or  forsaken  land.  The  people  of  India 
(Hindustani  especially)  called  Africa  Bazehah.  The  later 
Arabs  spoke  of  it  as  Iphrica — rather  Aphirika  —  which 
quickly  became  Afrika,  by  borrowing  the  name  from  Euro- 
peans yet  limiting  its  use  to  Africa  Propria,  already  mentioned, 
because  the  continent,  as  they  knew  it,  was  to  them  Maghreb, 
"Western,"  since  it  lay  in  that  direction  from  their  own  land. 
The  Ethiopians  gave  to  so  much  of  Africa  as  they  knew 


INTRODUCTION  XV 

(which  after  all  was  not  a  great  deal)  the  name  of  Al-Kebutan, 
while  the  Persians/ Armenians,  and  other  peoples  in  ancient 
times  had  different  names,  varying  most  remarkably  accord- 
ing to  the  quaint,  awful,  mysterious,  or  simply  unknown 
characteristics  of  the  land  bestowed  by  each  individual  nation 
or  tribe. 

The  etymology  of  the  name  Africa  is  another  puzzle,  deri- 
vations for  it  being  directly  as  the  number  of  writers;  but 
perhaps  the  most  plausible  is  that  which  derives  it  from  a 
corruption — or  more  correctly,  philologically,  a  logical  change 
—  of  the  Phoenician  word  Pherio  or  Pheruc,  which  signifies 
an  ear  of  corn  ("com"  meaning  what  is  specifically  distin- 
guished as  "wheat"  in  America);  hence  "the  country  of 
Africa"  came  to  be  so-called  because  it  was  known  to  abound 
in  that  necessary  commodity,  which  those  great  traders 
carried  in  their  ships  to  many  other  countries.  But  we  can- 
not leave  this  subject  of  etymology  without  repeating  the 
delightful  bit  of  adventurous  tale  given  by  the  Portuguese 
writer  Manoel  Faria-y-Sousa,  an  historian  and  poet  who 
lived  at  Madrid,  1590-1649,  in  his  "Africa  Portugesa."  He 
gets  the  name  from  Melech  Ifriqui,  a  king  of  Arabia  Felix, 
who  having  been  defeated  in  war  by  the  people  of  Higher 
Ethiopia,  in  a  battle  which  took  place  near  the  banks  of  the 
Nile,  forded  that  river  with  what  remained  of  his  army  and 
its  supernumeraries,  followers,  etc.  —  women,  children,  ser- 
vants, slaves,  and  the  hke.  He  then  crossed  a  portion  of 
the  desert  of  Libya,  settled  in  the  eastern  part  of  the  Berber 
country — modem  Barbary — and  called  his  new  home  by  the 
name  of  Ifriquia,  from  his  own.  The  running  down  of  this 
word  into  Africa  is  a  very  simple  matter  in  the  effect  of  attri- 
tion upon  place-names,  while  of  the  story  itself  we  may 
very  well  say  with  the  Italians  se  nan  t  vero  t  ben  trovato  ("if 
it  isn't  tme  it  is  plausible.") 

There  was  much  and  strange  confusion  among  the  ancient 
historians  and  geographers  about  the  defining  lines  of  Africa. 
That  Ptolemy  should  have  declared  it  extended  quite  to  the 
South  Pole  is  amusing,  and  we  can  hardly  suppress  a  smile 


XVI  INTRODUCTION 

when  we  think  of  southeastern  Asia  extended  through  the 
East  Indies,  to  absorb  Australia,  and  then  going  on  to  join 
Africa  projected,  making  the  Indian  Ocean  a  mare  clausum. 
Others  disputed  about  the  proper  line  dividing  the  two  con- 
tinents Asia  and  Africa.  Sallust  and  Pomponius  Mela  cut 
off  Egypt  Marmorica  from  Africa,  making  the  valley  of 
the  Catabathmos  the  boundary.  Others  again,  among 
whom  was  Strabo,  declare  that  the  River  Nile  was  the  divid- 
ing line,  notwithstanding  that  Herodotus  (at  whom  Strabo 
openly  sneered,  yet  to  whom  we  are  now  disposed  to  give  a 
good  deal  of  credit  for  having  been  a  fairly  astute  observer 
and,  all  things  considered,  a  pretty  accurate  recorder,  because 
his  myths  and  impossibilities  would  deceive  nobody)  had  long 
before  confuted  this  absurd  notion,  arguing  that  if  it  were 
consistently  adhered  to,  the  most  important  part  of  Egypt, 
that  which  is  called  the  Nile  Delta,  would  be  neither  in  Asia 
nor  yet  precisely  in  Africa.  But  all  of  these  old  geographers 
were  sadly  aglee  when  it  came  to  computing  the  area  of  the 
continent;  a  few  going  to  ridiculous  extremes  in  augmenting 
it  most  extravagantly,  others  erring  on  the  side  of  overcon- 
servative  diminution.  Even  Strabo  had  so  little  notion  of 
Africa's  actual  extent  that  he  roundly  condemned  those  who 
made  it  out  to  be  one- third  of  the  then -known  world,  and 
he  declared  it  was  too  small  and  inconsiderable  in  every  direc- 
tion to  deserve  such  distinction. 

We  owe  the  Arabs  a  grudge  for  their  effort,  a  wicked 
and  silly  one,  to  blot  out  the  remembrance  of  the  ancient  in- 
habitants of  Northern  Africa  by  giving  new  names  to  many 
places,  and  thus  causing  such  geographical  confusion  that  the 
older  Africans,  upon  their  recovering  the  land,  could  never 
thoroughly  rectify  it;  to  which  statement  may  be  added  the 
charge  that  many  of  the  old  cities,  and  whole  provinces  too, 
were  quite  laid  waste  imtil  restoration  was  impossible,  and 
so  the  memory  of  the  former  inhabitants  was  totally  lost. 
We  find  that  as  far  back  as  1526  writers  could  not  come  to 
even  tolerable  knowledge  of  the  old  geography,  in  spite  of 
great  pains  and  patient  industry  given  to  the  subject.    These 


INTRODUCTION  XVU 

old-timers  had  to  content  themselves  with  dividing  the  Africa 
which  they  knew  into  the  four  great  parts — that  is,  Barbary, 
Numidia,  Libya,  and  Negri tia — leaving  their  readers  quite  in 
the  dark  as  to  the  rest.  Those  who  have  any  interest  in  this 
subject,  or  are  merely  curious,  should  if  possible  read  the 
account  given  by  Christopher  Cellarius  (i 638-1 707)  and 
consult  the  curious  old  map  which  he  gives  of  Ancient  Africa. 
Later,  if  the  reader's  interest  goes  out  to  ecclesiastical  matters, 
he  is  recommended  to  read  "The  Universal  History." 


AFRICA    OF    TO-DAY 


AFRICA  OF  TO-DAY 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  AFRICA  OF  FABLE 

THERE  is  to-day  but  little  of  the  earth's  surface 
which  is  branded  as  unknown  to  us,  or  even 
marked  "unexplored"  on  the  recently  prepared  maps: 
a  Httle  of  Asia  —  Tibet  and  some  other  parts  of  that 
wonderful  Central  Asian  Plateau,  and  tracts  in  Siberia, 
for  example;  a  few  relatively  small  patches  of  Africa, 
around  the  throbbing  heart  of  "The  Dark  Continent," 
although  some  of  these  areas,  when  measured  by  mileage 
or  acreage  standards,  would  be  found  to  be  of  no  mean 
dimensions,  and  some  of  them,  indeed,  exceed  in  size 
that  of  full-fledged  "countries"  of  Europe.  If  we  speak 
with  precision,  as  of  course  we  should  do  when  discussing 
geography  or  history,  there  are  some  pieces  (insignifi- 
cant they  may  almost  be  called)  of  both  divisions  of  the 
Western  Hemisphere  which  have  not  yet  been  so  accu- 
rately explored,  surveyed,  and  mapped  as  to  satisfy  the 
exact  student  of  geography;  for  there  are  still  some 
considerable  areas  of  the  Dominion  of  Canada  and  small 
parts  of  Alaska,  too,  that  are,  to  say  the  least,  vaguely 
drawn  on  our  present  maps.  There  are  also  tracts  of 
no  mean  dimensions  in  South  America  about  which  our 
knowledge  of  their  physical  geography  and,  certainly, 


2  AFRICATO-DAY 

of  their  ethnology  are  yet  a  little  too  indefinite.  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  repeat  the  truism  that  we  do  not 
yet,  by  any  means,  know  all  there  is  be  to  known  of  the 
isles  of  the  sea  when  we  read  of  an  expedition  in  Dutch 
New  Guinea  discovering  a  tribe  of  natives  Uving  in 
conditions  of  primitive  simplicity,  discarding  clothing 
entirely  (raiment,  in  fact,  being  unknown  to  them),  un- 
able to  grasp  the  idea  of  numerals  beyond  two  or  three; 
and  yet  this  was  done  in  the  year  191 1,  Of  the  Arctic 
and  Antarctic  regions  we  probably  now  know  as  much 
as  will  satisfy  the  ordinary  reader  for  a  long  time  to  come; 
even  if  there  may  be  vast  tracts  of  absolutely,  as  yet, 
unexplored  land  in  the  neighbourhood  of  each  Pole. 
The  episode  connected  with  the  northern  one  seems  to 
account  for  the  indifference  with  which  the  public  look 
upon  the  British  expedition  towards  the  South  Pole,  and 
perhaps  explains  the  amusement  caused  by  the  Japanese 
failure. 

But  he  does  not  have  to  be  a  tottering  centenarian, 
by  any  means,  who  can  recall  distinctly  the  time  when 
the  great  continent  of  Africa  was  a  mysterious,  still 
unsolved,  most  alluring  problem;  and  yet  it  is  second  in 
size  to  Asia  only  of  the  integral  great  divisions,  having 
nearly  ten  million  square  miles  of  superficial  area.  It 
would  seem  almost  as  if  the  horrors  of  cHmate,  peoples, 
and  animals  with  which  the  ancients  invested  the  coun- 
try beyond  the  narrow  fringe  along  the  southern  coast  of 
the  Mediterranean  Sea  and  the  lower  part  of  the  Nile 
Valley  —  most  of  the  Egypt  that  we  know  —  had  con- 
tinued to  exert  its  influence  upon  Europeans  until  well 
into  the  nineteenth  century.     A  man  of  but  little  more 


THE    AFRICA    OF    FABLE  3 

than  middle  age  can  easily  remember  Africa  as  a  land  to 
which  a  few  people  went,  men  (and  women,  too,  perhaps) 
who  were  obsessed  by  some  strange  craze,  either  for 
specific  purposes,  commerce,  —  but  that  was  felt  to  be 
but  rarely  legitimate  in  those  days  of  slave  capture, 
ivory  and  gold  depredations,  and  the  hke,  —  or  evangeli- 
sation; to  be  sure  there  were  a  few  —  a  very  few  —  who 
went  in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure;  and  still  fewer  to  explore. 
Yet  all  went  with  that  sense  of  personal  danger  which 
so  often  (may  we  not  rightly  say  "always"  in  the  case 
of  such  bold  hearts  as  beat  high  when  Africa  was  the 
goal?)  adds  spice  to  any  occupation.  All  were  looked 
upon  by  their  friends  who  stayed  at  home  as  veri- 
table adventurers  —  and  foolhardy?  Yes,  probably 
most  lookers-on  thought  of  them  in  just  that  way  half 
a  century  or  so  ago! 

Yet  dotted  here  and  there  along  the  nearly  twenty 
thousand  miles  of  coast,  there  have  been  ports  of  entry 
for  greater  or  shorter  periods  of  historic  time.  The 
northernmost  of  these,  whether  on  the  east,  along  the 
western  shores  of  the  Red  Sea,  or  the  west,  in  the  remotest 
parts  of  ancient  Mauretania  (along  the  Mediterranean 
littoral,  of  course),  had  been  visited  at  the  very  dawn  of 
history.  In  those  eastern  and  western  and  northern 
ports  there  was  a  certain  measure  of  civilisation,  varying 
greatly  in  character  according  to  locaUty  and  in  number 
of  those  who  were  foreigners,  it  might  be  of  one  type  or 
a  mixture  of  several.  Yet,  not  excepting  the  northern 
coast,  that  bordering  upon  "the  tideless  sea"  and  facing 
the  countries  of  the  cultured  peoples  just  across  the 
Mediterranean,  it  was  but  a  step  from  these  outposts  of 


4  AFRICATO-DAY 

European  civilisation  into  the  unknown  territory,  just 
back  of  this  narrow  strip,  which  so  often  swallowed  up 
everything,  man  or  beast,  that  passed  the  dreaded 
boundary.  True,  indeed,  is  it  that  this  vast  continent, 
though  associated  with  the  dawn  of  civilisation,  with 
traditions  and  mysteries  of  the  most  stimulating  kind, 
has  remained  until  recently  one  of  the  least  known  and, 
both  commercially  and  politically,  one  of  the  least 
important  of  the  great  divisions  of  the  globe. 

What  a  difference  it  makes  in  the  visitor's  first  impres- 
sions and  his  subsequent  opinions  how  one  approaches 
the  great  continent.  If  from  the  north  as,  of  course,  the 
majority  do  first  reach  Africa,  it  is  not  always  actual 
land  that  is  first  seen  —  usually  the  tall  towers  and  min- 
arets of  Port  Said,  at  the  northern  entrance  of  the  Suez 
Canal,  rise  up  from  the  blue  waters  of  the  Mediterranean 
long  before  the  low  and  level  shore  begins  to  show  itself; 
and  he  who  has  just  left  Italy  behind  him  once  more 
recalls  to  mind  the  appearance  of  Venice,  if  he  ever  came 
back  into  that  city  from  the  Adriatic  along  the  Grand 
Canal  and  its  outlet.  It  was  somewhat  the  same  in  the 
days  before  the  Suez  Canal  route  was  opened,  when 
steamers  landed  at  Alexandria  and  passengers  went  by 
train  to  Cairo,  for  the  night  only,  if  in  a  hurry  to  catch 
the  connecting  steamer,  and  the  next  day  on  to  the  dis- 
agreeable little  port  of  Suez,  where  now  the  canal  opens 
into  the  Red  Sea.  Perhaps  it  is  unnecessary  to  say  so, 
and  yet  there  may  be  some  who  think  of  the  Suez  Canal 
as  they  have  naturally  been  led  to  do  by  their  experience 
with  other  canals;  that  is,  as  entered  or  left  through 
locks.     But  there  is  no  lock  in  any  part  of  the  Suez 


THE    AFRICA    OF    FABLE  5 

Canal;  at  either  end  steamers  enter  right  from  the  sea, 
as  if  going  into  a  river.  There  is  no  appreciable  current, 
and  the  difference  in  level  between  the  waters  of  the 
Mediterranean  and  the  Red  Sea  is  a  myth  which  caused 
amusing  apprehension  when  the  project  of  digging  the 
canal  was  first  mooted.  When  Alexandria  is  the  objec- 
tive port,  it  may  be  that  the  Libyan  Hills  first  assert 
themselves  to  introduce  the  new  continent;  or  perhaps 
suddenly,  although  there  may  be  nothing  else  really  to 
indicate  it  save  the  turbid  water  replacing  the  world- 
famous  blue,  the  traveller  realises  that  he  is  passing 
along  the  broad  base,  projected  far  into  the  sea,  of 
the  Nile  Delta,  although  he  may  yet  be  nearly  a  hun- 
dred miles  off  shore.  Such  a  preponderance  of  those 
who  are  going  to  Africa  make  Port  Said  or  Alexandria 
their  port  of  entry  that  this  brief  description  is  prob- 
ably that  of  the  common  impression  of  the  continent,  for 
the  first  time  seen. 

Westward  of  Alexandria,  yet  still  along  the  shore  of 
the  Mediterranean,  this  first  impression  varies  greatly 
as  it  is  the  coast  of  Tunis  or  Algiers  or  Morocco  that 
first  looms  in  sight;  while  those  who  pass  through  the 
Straits  of  Gibraltar  have  a  vastly  different  first  view  of 
Africa,  as  they  see  it  at  Cape  Spartel,  or  Jebel  Musa, 
"Apes'  Hill."  But  nowadays  so  many  tourists,  Ameri- 
cans especially,  make  their  first  acquaintance  with  this 
continent  at  the  Straits  of  Bab-el-Mandeb,  "The  Gate 
of  Tears"  —  because  the  old  mariners  dreaded  the  dan- 
gerous place  so  much  and  for  such  good  reason,  tide- 
rips,  treacherous  currents,  shifting  shoals,  sudden  gales 
conspiring  against  them  —  that  they  see  on  the  Africa 


6  AFRICATO-DAY 

side  the  bleak  desolation  of  sand  matched  by  equal  deso- 
lation of  Arabia  in  Asia. 

Then,  jumping  in  imagination  some  five  thousand 
miles  to  the  southern  end  of  the  continent,  and  approach- 
ing the  coast  at  Cape  Town,  now  quite  as  popular  a  place 
of  entry  as  the  older  northern  ports.  Table  Mountain 
and  the  surrounding  bold  headlands  create  quite  another 
first  impression;  or  perhaps  False  Bay  lures  the  careless 
or  befogged  mariner  into  trouble  which  leaves  anything 
but  a  pleasing  first  impression.  Yet  no  matter  from 
what  direction  the  approach  is  made,  there  is  even  now 
quite  enough  of  mystery  about  Africa  to  make  the  nerves 
tingle  and  the  imagination  run  riot,  as  perhaps  no  strange 
land  can  do,  possibly  excepting  Palestine;  and  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Holy  Land  is  of  such  a  totally  different  nature 
that  even  this  exception  may  also  be  passed  over. 

With  what  consummate  skill  Nature  seems  to  have 
worked  in  making  the  African  continent  a  land  filled  with 
dreadful,  impossible  mysteries  for  the  peoples  of  Europe, 
and  of  southwestern  Asia  too,  in  ancient  times  —  three 
thousand  years  ago!  In  the  north,  across  the  whole 
breadth,  save  the  narrow  valley  of  the  Nile,  stretches 
the  great  desert  of  Sahara,  forming  a  barrier  that  was 
simply  impassable  until  the  Arabs  took  their  camels 
there,  and  even  with  these  there  was  little  more  than  an 
advance,  certainly  not  a  conquest,  for  a  very  long  time. 
It  is  most  appropriate  to  call  the  camel  "the  ship  of  the 
desert, "  for  the  shifting  sands,  blown  to  and  fro  almost 
like  the  waters  of  the  sea,  are  not  imlike  mighty  waves 
over  which  the  camel  alone  can  ride  in  safety.  The  fact 
of  there  being  such  an  obstacle  to  progress  as  the  desert 


THE    AFRICA    OF    FABLE  7 

could  not  but  have  had  the  effect  of  making  the  strangers 
from  Europe  and  Asia  fill,  in  their  imagination,  the 
regions  beyond  with  all  manner  of  dreadful  creatures 
and  to  give  the  fullest  credence  to  the  tales  told  by  the 
savage  natives  about  fearful  places  far  oJEf  in  the  distance 
whose  very  inaccessibility  added  a  weird  fascination. 
Then,  too,  the  one  great  river,  the  Nile,  that  furnished 
what  might  possibly  have  been  used  as  a  means  —  and 
the  only  means  at  that  time — for  penetrating  the  regions 
to  the  south,  was  itself,  perhaps,  the  deepest  mystery  of 
all  —  its  periodical  rise  and  fall  occurring  with  almost 
uncanny  regularity,  both  as  to  season  and  as  to  volume, 
when  the  flood  was  at  its  height.  What  fed  the  great 
stream  in  those  hot  regions  which  seemed  to  forbid  the 
very  thought  of  moisture?  This  was  a  puzzle  that  must 
have  sorely  baflfled  the  colonists  for  centuries. 

It  is  certain  that  Greeks  and  Romans  established 
colonies  along  the  southern  shore  of  the  Mediterranean 
at  a  very  remote  time  past,  but  beyond  that  narrow 
fringe  of  fairly  attractive  land  bordering  the  blue  waters 
they  made  no  successful  effort  to  penetrate.  The  Phoe- 
nicians, too,  had  settlements  in  northern  Africa  fully  a 
thousand  or  fifteen  hundred  years  before  the  time  of 
Christ.  Cambyses  III,  the  son  and  successor  of  Cyrus 
the  Great,  of  Persia,  effected  the  conquest  of  Egypt 
in  the  year  525  B.C.  and  made  that  country,  for  a  time, 
a  part  of  the  Persian  Empire.  So  that  all  the  evidence 
points  to  a  fairly  intimate  acquaintance,  among  the 
inhabitants  of  the  ancient  kingdoms  of  Europe  and  the 
Levant,  with  the  fertile  Nile  basin  and  the  Mediter- 
ranean coast  of  Africa.     But  that  same  testimony  con- 


8  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

firms  the  mystery  which  enshrouded  the  mighty  land  up 
the  Nile  Valley,  and  beyond  the  narrow  sections  which 
the  Europeans  and  Asiatics  had  reached. 

For  that  which  is  not  really  very  ancient  but  certainly 
most  quaint  in  the  old  literature  about  Africa,  we  turn  to 
"The  Marvellous  Adventures  of  Sir  John  Maundeville, 
Kt."  Whether  or  not  Sir  John  ever  really  lived  and 
travelled  and  wrote  an  account  of  his  "marvellous  adven- 
tures," or  dictated  them  to  a  scribe  who  added  embel- 
lishments to  please  his  own  scholarly  fancy,  are  not 
of  the  slightest  importance  as  facts.  That  which  is  told 
in  the  book  represents  fairly  well  the  opinions  concerning 
the  mysterious  land  of  Africa  (and  almost  every  then- 
known  comer  of  the  world)  which  obtained  in  Europe  at 
the  time  when  Sir  John  is  alleged  to  have  lived;  that  is 
to  say,  about  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century,  for 
Mr.  John  Aston's  edition  of  "The  Voiage  and  Travayle 
of  Sir  John  Maundeville,  Knight,  which  treateth  of  the 
Way  toward  EQerusalem  and  of  Marvayles  of  Inde  and 
other  Hands  and  Countreys,"  states  "ye  shall  here  by 
me  John  Maundeville  Knight  which  was  borne  in  Eng- 
land in  the  town  of  Saint  Albones  [St.  Albans],  and 
passed  the  sea  in  the  yeare  of  our  Lord  Jesu  Christ 
A.  Mill,  C.  [although  Pyson  and  other  authorities  say 
MCCCXXXIL]  on  the  day  of  Sainct  Michael,  find  set 
down."  No  two  of  the  many  editions  of  this  interesting 
and  most  amusing  book  agree  precisely  in  words,  so  that 
they  are  in  reality  almost  translations  rather  than  mere 
renderings  (transliterations  shall  we  say?)  into  familiar 
English.  One  of  the  easiest  to  read  is  that  by  Mr. 
Arthur  Layard,  because  it  is  done  into  modern  spelling. 


Cofiyri^kl,  UnderiLciod  It  Underwood,  N.  Y. 

The  Beginning  of  the  Nile 


THE    AFRICA    OF    FABLE  9 

Herodotus,  of  course,  is  rather  disposed  to  give  full 
credence  to  the  marvellous  tales  from  and  about  Africa, 
south  of  the  Egyptian  boundary  and  west  into  the  Libyan 
desert,  and  consequently  Strabo  often  has  a  sly  fling  at 
Herodotus'  credulity.  "Herodotus  and  other  writers 
trifle  very  much  when  they  introduce  into  thdr  histories 
the  marvellous,  like  [an  interlude  of]  music  and  song,  or 
some  melody  [as  if  for  the  purpose  of  sweetening  a  piU 
that  otherwise  would  be  hard  to  swallow] ;  for  example, 
in  asserting  that  the  sources  of  the  Nile  are  near  the 
numerous  islands,  at  Syene  and  Elephantina,  and  that 
at  this  spot  the  river  is  of  unfathomable  depth."  Strabo 
tells  us  that  he  himself  entirely  discredits  these  fables  of 
other  historians,  and  declares  that  he  introduces  some 
of  their  marvellous  yams  merely  to  round  out  his  own 
narrative;  yet  it  is  not  always  clearly  indicated  in  his 
own  text  when  some  of  these  astonishing  tales  are  just 
these  "introductions"  and  when  the  statements  are 
given  credence  by  himself.  One  of  the  stories  that 
Strabo  stamps  as  fictitious  is  that  the  Sinus  Emporicus 
(or  merchants'  bay)  was  a  cave  which  admits  the  sea  at 
high  tide  to  the  distance  even  of  seven  stadia  (nearly 
three-quarters  of  a  mile),  and  in  front  of  this  bay  was  a 
low  and  level  tract  with  an  altar  of  Hercules  upon  it, 
which  was  not  covered  by  the  tide!  So  is  another;  that 
on  other  bays  of  the  extreme  northwest  coasts  of  Africa, 
beyond  the  "Pillars  of  Hercules"  (Straits  of  Gibraltar), 
there  were  ancient  settlements  of  Tyrians,  abandoned 
already  in  Strabo's  time,  which  consisted  of  not  less 
than  three  hundred  cities,  all  of  them  destroyed  by  the 
Pharusii  and  the  Nigrike.    Yet,  just  a  little  later,  this 


lO  AFRICATO-DAY 

same  writer  accepts  without  protest  the  statement  that 
in  certain  rivers  of  Mauretania  leeches  are  bred  seven 
cubits  (twelve  feet!)  in  length,  with  gills  pierced  through 
with  holes  through  which  they  respire.  "This  country 
is  also  said  to  produce  a  vine,  the  girth  of  which  two 
men  can  scarcely  compass,  and  bearing  bunches  of  grapes 
about  a  cubit  in  size  [length]."  The  Egyptian  cubit  is 
reckoned  at  20.64  English  inches;  therefore  these  grapes 
of  Mauretania  would  have  compared  not  unfavourably 
with  those  of  Eshcol,  pictured  in  the  illustrated  Bible.* 
Strabo  also  quotes  Iphicrates  (or  Hypsicrates,  according 
to  some  commentators),  whose  statements  he  generally 
accepts,  as  declaring  that  in  this  same  country  there  were 
large  serpents,  so  old  and  huge  that  grass  grew  upon 
their  backs  even!  But  of  the  unknown  regions  beyond 
those  districts,  concerning  which  some  information  was 
to  be  had,  Strabo  wisely  says  practically  nothing.  He 
mentions,  to  be  sure,  the  cave-dwellers  {TroglodytcB)  and 
the  lotus-eaters  {Lotophagi)  in  a  casual,  half  incredulous 
sort  of  way,  but  he  invests  them  with  none  of  the 
startling  traits  which  are  attributed  to  them  by  so  many 
other  writers  of  his  day  and  by  some  who  belong  in  what 
may  almost  be  called  modem  times. 

We  ought  not  to  leave  this  subject  of  legendary  Africa 
without  a  brief  mention,  at  least,  of  the  "Mountains  of 
the  Moon,"  which  have,  as  Mr.  E,  H.  Bunbury  says,t 
proved  a  sad  stumbling  block  to  geographers  in  modem 
times.  The  very  name  itself  suggests  something  quite 
out  of  the  ordinary,  something  mythical  and  uncanny. 
The  range  was  alleged,  by  Ptolemy  especially,  to  stretch 
*See  Niunbers  13:  23.  fSee  Enc.  Brit. 


THE    AFRICA    OF    FABLE  II 

from  east  to  west  almost  entirely  across  the  conti- 
nent at  about  the  equator;  dividing,  in  a  most  arbi- 
trary manner  and  by  an  almost  imbroken  line,  the 
reasonably  known  parts  of  the  continent  from  the 
absolutely  unknown.  The  curious  persistency  of  these 
"Mountains  of  the  Moon"  is  alluded  to  again  in 
Chapter  II,  "Africa  as  the  Dark  Continent  and  Its 
Emergence  into  Light." 

Although  there  is  seemingly  a  strange  break  in  the 
record  of  intercourse  between  the  West  and  the  East, 
that  is  to  say  between  the  extreme  parts  of  southwestern 
Asia  and  the  Mediterranean  countries  of  Europe,  with 
the  remotest  parts  of  the  Asiatic  continent  and  its  adja- 
cent islands,  the  East  Indies  or  "Spice  Islands,"  from 
about  the  tenth  century  until  the  early  years  of  the  six- 
teenth, it  was  but  natural  that  the  Europeans  should 
have  felt  the  desirability  —  almost,  one  may  say,  the 
necessity  —  of  an  ocean  route  to  remote  Asia,  which 
should  be  free  from  one  seriously  crippling  phase,  the 
Mediterranean  and  the  Red  Sea  pirates,  as  well  as  the 
expensive  and  hazardous  transhipment  at  or  near  the 
Isthmus  of  Suez.  Equally  natural  was  it  that  the  Portu- 
guese should  have  been  the  first  to  make  this  attempt  to 
reach  Asia  by  sea,  since  that  part  of  the  world  came 
within  their  bailiwick  as  defined  by  the  famous  papal 
bulls  dividing  the  earth  into  two  parts  by  an  imaginary 
line  drawn  north  and  south,  west  of  the  Azores,  and 
granting  all  new  lands  east  thereof  to  the  Portuguese 
and  west  to  the  Spaniards.  The  great  temptation,  to 
comment  jocosely  upon  the  inevitable  overlapping,  be- 
cause the  rotundity  of  the  earth  was  even  then  coming 


12  AFRICATO-DAY 

to  be  admitted  by  everyone,  is  resisted.  The  Portu- 
guese assumed  the  correctness  of  the  theory  that  Africa 
was  not  a  land  stretching  continuously  down  to  the 
South  Pole,  but  probably  circumnavigable. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  the  Spanish  peninsula 
took  no  part,  nationally,  in  the  Crusades  for  the 
attempted  recovery  of  the  Holy  Land.  Knowing  how 
intensely  loyal  the  Spaniards  and  Portuguese  were  to 
the  Roman  Catholic  faith,  and  how  eager  was  the  Pope 
and  his  advisers  to  achieve  the  expulsion  of  the  paynims 
from  Palestine,  especially  that  Jerusalem  with  its  most 
sacred  sites,  rehcs,  and  treasures  might  be  regained  for 
the  True  Faith,  this  seeming  apathy  on  the  part  of  the 
Spanish  and  Portuguese  strikes  us  as  very  strange.  But 
the  Spaniards  were  altogether  too  heavily  burdened  by 
their  own  effort  to  complete  the  expulsion  of  the  Moors 
from  their  own  country  and  to  recover  from  the  disas- 
trous effect  of  that  expulsion  upon  their  own  economic 
conditions  to  think  of  sending  any  considerable  body  of 
troops  abroad.  Consequently  Portugal  took  the  lead 
of  Spain  in  this  effort  to  penetrate  the  Far  East.  It  was 
the  Portuguese  who  pushed  down  the  west  coast  of 
Africa  until,  if  possible,  its  southern  extremity  should 
be  rounded  and  a  way  opened  for  their  ships  to  reach  the 
Indian  Ocean  and  the  whole  of  Asia's  southern  and 
eastern  coasts.  The  fighting  that  the  Portuguese  had 
had  with  "The  Sea- Wolves  of  the  Mediterranean,"  the 
Barbary  Corsairs,  had  given  them  much  valuable  train- 
ing, and  it  undoubtedly  stimulated  their  effort  to  pass 
out  into  the  Atlantic  and  then  down  the  African  coast, 
partly  to  be  rid  of  these  pests.     More  will  be  said  of  this 


THE    AFRICA    OF    FABLE  13 

training  in  encounters  with  the  Moorish  pirates  in  Chap- 
ter XV,  when  we  speak  of  America's  relations  with 
Africa,  because  the  moving  cause  for  our  early  intercourse 
was  those  Corsairs,  and  naturally  it  will  be  desirable  to 
trace  briefly  their  raison  d'etre,  their  evolution,  their 
frightful  influence,  and  their  extermination. 

In  13 1 7  and  135 1  certain  Portuguese  ships  with  Geno- 
ese pilots  visited  the  Madeira  and  the  Canary  Islands, 
and  even  went  as  far  as  the  Azores,  a  thousand  miles 
out  in  the  Atlantic  —  these  groups  of  islands  appear  on 
Medici's  map  of  135 1.  It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that 
a  "pilot"  in  those  days,  and  for  some  time  later,  was  not 
precisely  one  whose  ability  was  limited  to  a  knowledge 
of  safe  channels;  he  was,  in  addition  to  that,  a  trained 
and  expert  navigator  as  well  as  being  somewhat  of 
a  geographer.  In  1377  occurred  the  accidental  and 
most  romantic  visit  of  the  EngHshman,  Robert  Machin, 
to  the  Madeiras,  but  it  is  strange  that  this  episode  is 
not  given  in  Engh'sh  histories,  for  we  have  to  look  into 
Portuguese  literature  for  the  best  account  of  it.  In 
1402  the  Norman  knight,  Jean  de  Bethencourt,  estab- 
lished a  colony  on  the  Canaries,  and  because  aid  and 
supplies  had  been  given  by  the  King  of  Castile,  he 
yielded  homage  to  the  Spanish  monarch.  The  African 
coast  as  far  as  Cape  Non  had  been  explored  in  a  rough 
and  ready  sort  of  a  way  in  the  thirteenth  century,  the 
name  being  given  because  it  seemed  as  if  the  point  said 
"No"  to  wistful  mariners,  who  were  deterred  from  push- 
ing past  it  by  the  fear  of  intense  heat,  the  rotundity  of 
the  earth,  and  other  causes  operating  to  invest  explora- 
tion with  all  manner  of  dread.     However,  the  cape  was 


14  AFRICATO-DAY 

passed  in  the  following  century,  and  slowly,  step  by  step 
as  it  were,  those  Portuguese  adventurers  made  their 
way  down  the  coast  and  crossed  the  equator,  thus  doing 
away  with  the  dread  of  the  impassable  hot  zone.  And 
yet  when  Prince  Henry  of  Portugal,  "The  Navigator," 
died  in  1463,  these  newer  discoverers  had  actually  gone 
no  farther  than  had  Hanno  two  thousand  years  before; 
for  between  570  to  470  b.c.  Hanno  had  made  a  voyage 
out  into  the  Atlantic,  passed  down  the  coast  of  Maure- 
tania,  and  estabhshed  seven  small  stations  as  far  to  the 
southward  as  Kerne,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Rio  d'  Oro, 
which  existed  for  a  considerable  time.  From  the  extreme 
southernmost  of  these  he  made  two  voyages  of  explora- 
tion, the  second  one  going  as  far  as  Sierra  Leone  and 
the  neighbouring  Sherboro  Island,  where  he  found  "wild 
men  and  women  covered  with  hair,  called  by  the 
interpreters,  'gorillas.'"  But  very  near  to  the  end  of 
the  fifteenth  century  Bartholomew  Diaz,  when  some 
four  hundred  miles  south  of  the  Tropic  of  Capricorn,  was 
driven  due  south  by  a  storm  for  thirteen  days  into  a 
region  of  frightful  waves  and  turbulence  that  well-nigh 
prostrated  his  seamen;  then,  with  moderating  weather, 
he  shaped  his  course  towards  the  east  and  slowly  hauled 
up  towards  the  north,  until  he  made  the  coast  to  the 
west  of  him  and  reached  the  land  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Gouritz  River,  over  two  hundred  miles  east  of  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope.  He  had  rounded  Africa  and  got  into  the 
Indian  Ocean,  although  for  a  time  he  did  not  realise 
what  he  had  done.  Retracing  his  course,  he  doubled 
the  point  to  which  he  gave  the  name  "Stormy  Cape," 
but  King  John  II  of  Portugal  promptly  changed  this 


THE    AFRICA    OF    FABLE  15 

to  Cape  of  Good  Hope  as  soon  as  he  comprehended  the 

great  importance  of  the  event.* 

This  circumnavigating  of  Africa  had  been  one  of  the 

topics   that   aroused   the   fiercest   sort   of   controversy 

amongst  scholars  and  navigators  from  the  earliest  times, 

and  the  Greek  and  Latin  writers  quoted  by  Europeans 

in  the  Middle  Ages  were  arrayed  into  two  strenuously 

opposed   factions.     It  is  strange,  although   this  is   of 

course  the  expression  of  an  opinion  based  upon  knowledge 

after  the  event,  that  the  Homeric  notion  of  an  ocean 

entirely  surrounding  the  terrestrial  world,  the  flat  one 

then  conceived,  should  have  survived  so  persistently 

and  for  long  after  the  globular  form  of  the  earth  had  come 

to  be  maintained  by  most  geographers.    The  greatest 

of   them,    Erastosthenes,    correctly   assumed   that   the 

Indian  Ocean  was  actually  connected  with  the  Atlantic 

at  some  point  far  to  the  south,  very  vaguely  surmised, 

however,  and  hence  he  and  others  of  his  way  of  thinking, 

such  as  Posidonius  and  Strabo,  contended  for  the  circum- 

navigability  of  the  African  continent.    There  is  neither 

opportunity  nor  necessity  for  discussing  the  interesting 

stories,  decidedly  apocryphal  as  they  are,  of  the  actual 

accomplishing  of  this  feat  in  times  long  preceding  the 

voyage  of  Bartholomew  Diaz;  as,  for  example,  the  story 

told  by  Herodotus  of  the  Phoenician  squadron  which, 

during  the  reign  of  Necho  in  Egypt,  610  to  595  B.C., 

sailed  quite  round  Africa  and  reappeared  in  the  Red 

Sea.     It  is  right,  however,  to  mention,  without  details, 

*  Some  accounts  of  Diaz's  performance  state  that  he  deliberately 
steered  south,  east,  and  north,  and  would  have  gone  farther  up  the 
east  coast  of  Africa,  bad  not  his  sailors  almost  mutinied  and  compelled 
him  to  turn  back. 


l6  AFRICATO-DAY 

Erastosthenes'  strange  blunder  about  the  Caspian  Sea 
being  a  huge  gulf  connected  with  the  Baltic  (and  North) 
Sea  by  a  long,  circuitous  channel  which  afforded  another 
route  to  the  Atlantic  and  thence  round  the  world.  We 
should  naturally  assume  such  a  geographer  as  he  to  be 
possessed  of  sufficient  information  to  prevent  his  mistak- 
ing the  Volga  River  for  a  salt-water  channel,  but  such 
he  apparently  did.  In  a  certain  way,  however,  this 
blunder  finds  parallels  in  mistakes  made  by  very  recent 
geographers  as  to  physical  conditions  in  Africa  —  some 
of  which  will  be  mentioned  in  subsequent  chapters.  We 
must  here  note  again  the  extraordinary  way  in  which 
Ptolemy,  usually  reckoned  to  be  a  master  of  his  craft, 
came  to  grief  in  his  speculations  as  to  the  form  of  the 
African  continent.  This  he  contended  extended  south- 
ward until  it  reached  the  South  Pole ;  that  the  continent 
of  Asia  likewise  swept  down  from  eastward  of  Farther 
India  until  it,  too,  joined  the  Antarctic  continent;  thus 
making  the  Indian  Ocean  a  completely  landlocked  body 
of  salt  water.  We  must  not  omit  mention  of  the  fact 
that  Antonio  Gongalves,  in  1442,  brought  back  to  Portu- 
gal gold  and  negro  slaves  from  the  Rio  d'  Oro  country, 
four  hundred  miles  beyond  Cape  Bojador  (26°  06'  57"  N. 
lat.),  and  that  this  was  the  beginning  of  the  African  slave 
trade  —  a  subject  which  will  engage  our  attention  later. 


CHAPTER  II 

AFRICA  AS   THE  DARK  CONTINENT  AND  ITS 
EMERGENCE  INTO  LIGHT.    MISSIONARY 
ENTERPRISES  BRIEFLY  TOUCHED  UPON 

IT  seems  a  long  while  ago,  as  we  look  backward  now, 
to  the  time  when  Henry  M.  Stanley  published  his 
interesting  accomit  of  his  quest  for  the  German  governor 
of  Equatoria  (1890),  Edouard  Schnitzer,  Emin  Pasha, 
and  he  told  of  the  rescue  of  what  was  left  of  Emin's 
little  band,  and  of  their  successful  retreat.  It  strikes  the 
reader  now  with  singular  force  that  the  measure  of  appre- 
ciation shown  by  the  rescued  governor,  the  almost  child- 
ish objections  he  made  to  being  saved,  and  the  difficulties 
he  needlessly  put  in  Stanley's  way,  hardly  justified  the 
great  expense  incurred  and  the  terrible  anxiety  and 
suffering  of  those  who  took  part  in  the  mission  of  succour; 
but  this  may  be  declared  heartless.  Yet  Stanley,  only 
a  Uttle  more  than  twenty  years  ago,  gave  his  book  the 
title  "In  Darkest  Africa,"  and  if  we  compare  his  sketch 
map  in  that  volume  with  the  one  which  he  inserted  in 
his  previous  work,  "How  I  Found  Livingstone,"  published 
in  1871-72,  and  also  study  another  map  in  a  little  volume 
entitled  "Narrative  of  Discovery  and  Adventure  in 
Africa  from  the  Earliest  Ages  to  the  Present  Time";* 
reading,  in  connection  with  these  other  books,  the  account 

*  Edinburgh  Cabinet  Library,  1830. 
17 


l8  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

given  by  Major  Denham,  who  expressed  himself  as 
having  "ahnost  full  assurance  of  reaching  those  depths 
of  Africa  from  which  no  European  has  ever  yet  returned" ; 
and  last,  when  we  read  Mungo  Park's  book  and  study 
his  routes,  taken  a  little  before  and  just  at  the  turn  from 
the  eighteenth  century  into  the  nineteenth,  we  are  com- 
pelled to  admit  that  barely  a  score  of  years  ago  Africa 
was  still  not  at  all  inaccurately  described  as  "The  Dark 
Continent,"  and  it  is  not  until  the  opening  of  this  twen- 
tieth century  that  the  emergence  into  the  Ught  began  to 
assume  satisfactory  conditions  in  fact.  By  this  state- 
ment we  do  not  mean  that  there  had  not  been  wonder- 
ful development  accompHshed  in  many  parts  of  Africa 
before  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century;  it  is  only 
when  we  regard  carefully  the  tremendous  area  of  the 
great  continent  and  think  of  the  narrow  fringe  of  civili- 
sation along  the  east  and  west  coasts,  the  old  civilisation 
of  the  Egyptian  inset  along  the  Nile,  and  the  newer  one 
which  has  pushed  northward  from  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope,  that  we  realise  properly  how  meagre,  after  all, 
had  been  the  "emergence  into  light." 

The  chronological  series  of  small  maps  of  Africa, 
reproduced  in  "In  Darkest  Africa,"  beginning  with  that 
of  Hekataeus,  500  B.C.,  and  coming  down  well  into  the 
nineteenth  century,  gives  us  a  most  emphatic  demonstra- 
tion of  how  very  slow  was  the  opening  up  of  the  great 
continent,  Africa,  into  that  Ught  which  permitted  of 
even  a  rough  comparison  with,  let  us  say,  Asia.  And 
in  1819,  when  the  "Mountains  of  the  Moon"  still 
appeared  on  the  maps  given  in  school  atlases  and  the 
"Sources  of  the   Nile"  were   placed   at   "somewhere 


Copyright,  L'luirru'ood  ^-  V nAcru-ood,  S.  Y. 

Blacks  i  kom   riii;  Equatorial  Plains  CXimbing  a  Mountain 

The    natives    are    wrapj)ed    in    blankets    for    protection    against    the 

unaccustomed  cold.      The  peak  in  the  distance  is  18,000  Jeet  bigb 


AFRICA    AS    THE    DARK    CONTINENT      I9 

between  10°  north  and  20°  south  latitude"  (a  margin 
of  over  two  thousand  statute  miles,  which  excites  a 
smile!),  conditions  were  but  little  better.  In  this  view  of 
the  case  we  may  safely  say  that  until  very  modem  times 
our  knowledge  of  Africa  was  far  from  satisfactory.  As 
recently,  comparatively,  as  1747  —  at  which  date  our 
knowledge  of  Asia  was  fairly  satisfactory  —  an  English 
writer*  said:  "The  far  greater  Part  [of  Africa]  continues 
still  unknown  to  us,  and  the  Ancients  knew  still  less, 
who  looked  upon  it  as  desart  and  uninhabitable.  And 
though  we  are  since  become  better  acquainted  with  it, 
yet  our  Knowledge  of  it  extends  little  farther  than  the 
Regions  that  lie  along  the  Coasts,  especially  those  along 
the  Mediterranean;  which  being  the  most  fruitful  in 
Com  and  other  Products,  and  more  easy  of  Access, 
have-  been  more  constantly  resorted  to  both  by  Euro- 
peans and  Asiatics.  As  for  the  Midland  Parts,  as  they 
were  for  a  long  while  beUeved  inaccessible  and  uninhabited, 
by  reason  of  their  intolerable  Heat,  they  lying  mostly 
under  the  Torrid  Zone,  they  have  on  that  very  Account 
as  well  as  the  Savageness  of  its  [their]  Inhabitants,  been 
little  Visited  by  any  Strangers.  Even  the  Southern 
Parts  of  it,  which  He  under  a  more  temperate  Climate, 
and  are  much  easier  of  Access,  are  found  inhabited  by 
such  barbarous  People,  so  fierce  and  savage  in  their 
Nature,  so  uncouth  and  forbidding  in  their  Manners 
and  Language,  so  shy  of  [in]  all  Intercourse  with  foreign 
Nations,  that  our  Readers  need  not  wonder  at  our  being 

*"A  Complete  System  of  Geography:  Being  a  Description  of  all 
the  Continents,  Islands,  Countries,  Chief  Towns,  Harbours,  Lakes  and 
Rivers,  Mountains,  Mines,  etc.,  of  the  Known  World."  Emanuel  Brown, 
Geographer  to  His  Majesty. 


20  AFRICATO-DAY 

almost  as  much  in  the  Dark  about  them  as  we  are  about 
Midlands  [Central  Africa.] " 

When  we  speak  of  Africa's  emergence  from  darkness 
into  light,  we  are,  of  course,  using  the  words  in  a  strictly 
modern  sense  as  connoting  European  progress.  There 
is  no  intention  to  disparage  the  civiHsation  which  was  to 
have  been  seen  in  Egypt  thousands  of  years  ago;  nor  is 
it  meant  to  ignore  the  fact  that  even  the  influence  of  the 
Arabs  along  the  Mediterranean  shores  (imsatisfactory 
as  it  was  when  measured  by  European  standards  for 
several  hundred  years  past)  was  decidedly  an  advance 
upon  what  they  had  originally  found  there.  Of  the 
Phoenician,  Greek,  and  Roman  civiUsation,  it  would  be 
an  impertinence  to  allude  to  it  as  in  any  way  similar  to 
conditions  existing  in  Africa  among  the  aboriginal  peoples 
and  tribes  of  savages. 

In  discussing  the  efforts  of  Europeans  to  explore, 
colonise,  and  develop  the  Dark  Continent,  we  should  — 
at  least  so  it  seems  to  us  —  begin  with  the  time  when  they 
really  commenced  to  have  serious  aspirations  in  those 
matters.  Something  has  already  been  said  of  Portu- 
guese progress  along  the  west  coast;  but  we  must  now 
give  a  little  attention  to  a  most  important  episode  in 
European  history  which  had  grave  and  almost  disastrous 
bearing  upon  African  development — that  is,  the  expulsion 
of  the  Moors  from  Spain  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  When  the  conquest  of  Granada  brought  about 
the  final  downfall  of  Moorish  supremacy  in  Castile, 
the  attitude  of  the  victorious  Spaniards  was  at  first 
fairly  lenient  towards  the  Moors;  the  latter  were  prom- 
ised security  in  their  material  possessions  and  entire 


AFRICA    AS    THE    DARK    CONTINENT      21 

freedom  in  the  practice  of  their  religion,  providing 
always  that  nothing  was  done  which  might  be  construed 
as  offensive  to  the  Christian  faith.  But  this  indulgence 
was  soon  displaced  by  harshness,  and  the  Moors  were 
compelled  to  make  choice  between  apostacising  or  ban- 
ishment. Many  of  them  chose  the  former  alternative 
and  made  profession  of  the  Christian  faith;  but  even 
their  apparent  subscribing  to  the  Roman  Catholic  doc- 
trine did  not  relieve  them  from  severity,  because  the 
sincerity  of  their  conversion  was  always  impugned,  and 
the  Ufe  of  the  Moriscoes  (as  those  Moors  were  called 
who  remained  in  Spain)  became  almost  unendurable: 
yet  so  strong  is  the  human  instinct  to  protect  material 
interests  that  many  continued  to  submit  to  indignities 
and  actual  persecution  rather  than  give  up  their  property. 
Those  who  accepted  banishment  and  held  to  the  faith 
of  Islam  now  turned  their  hands  against  all  Christians, 
regardless  of  nationaHty,  and  speedily  developed  capacity 
to  make  the  lives  of  Europeans  along  all  the  northern 
Mediterranean  shores,  from  the  Dardanelles  to  Gibraltar, 
one  constant  dream  of  horror.  The  act  of  the  Spaniards 
in  driving  out  the  Moors  resulted  in  national  as  well  as 
individual  loss  amounting  almost  to  destruction,  and  it 
was  one  of  the  most  fatal  mistakes  recorded  in  history. 
The  Portuguese,  blocked  in  their  pathway  towards 
the  East  by  the  Moorish  pirates  and  by  the  Turkish 
domination  of  the  Levant,  turned  their  attention  to 
parts  of  Africa  beyond  the  spheres  of  influence  of  Moor 
and  Turk.  It  cannot  truthfully  be  said  that  the  Portu- 
guese had  at  that  time  any  serious  plans  for  colonising 
Western  Africa.   What  Uttle  they  did  in  this  way  along 


22  AFRICATO-DAY 

those  coasts  was  merely  incidental:  and  whatever  they 
did  was  rarely,  if  ever,  to  the  credit  of  Christians,  or 
indeed  of  human  beings.  As  John  Fiske  and  others  tell 
us,  there  were  most  unholy  deeds  wrought  by  those  men 
who,  having  suffered  more  or  less  from  the  bitter,  merci- 
less crusades  of  the  Barbary  Corsairs,  themselves  turned 
freebooters,  and  wherever  they  landed  they  left  behind 
them  an  unsavoury  reputation  for  expropriation  of 
property  and  kidnapping  of  men,  women,  and  children 
to  sell  them  into  slavery  but  little  better  than  that  which 
their  own  countrymen  endured  from  Moorish  captors. 
Innumerable  deeds  were  committed  by  these  Portuguese 
adventurers  which  should  have  been  requited  with 
condign  punishment,  only  there  was  no  one  to  inflict  it. 
They  were  a  law  unto  themselves,  and  for  many  years 
the  story  of  the  West  Coast  of  Africa  is  one  of  violence 
which  should  have  brought  the  perpetrators  to  the 
gallows.  Much  as  there  is  to  admire  in  the  bravery  of 
those  Portuguese  sailors  in  pushing  down  into  unknown 
seas,  it  is  almost  negatived  by  their  acts  towards  their 
fellowmen,  blacks  though  they  were,  on  land  and  on  sea. 
Were  this  the  only  tale  to  narrate  of  Africa's  ear h est 
sign  of  emergence  from  darkness  into  light,  it  would  be 
wiser  to  leave  it  untold  here.  But  there  is  a  better  one, 
and  it  redounds  to  the  credit  of  men  and  women  who 
sought  to  uplift  the  natives  of  Africa.  First,  however, 
it  must  be  admitted  that  the  earliest  efforts  of  commer- 
cial men  from  other  nations  of  Europe  than  Spain  or 
Portugal  were  not  always  —  indeed  were  not  often  — 
along  the  ideal  pathway  of  Christian  civilisation:  the 
temptation  to  practise  unfairly  upon  the  ignorance  of 


AFRICA    AS    THE    DARK    CONTINENT      2$ 

the  heathen  natives  was  ahnost  irresistible,  and  the 
pioneers  of  trade  were  all  too  frequently  actuated  by 
most  sordid  motives  only. 

Still,  we  detect  rays  of  Hght  almost  synchronous  with 
those  evil  deeds.  In  152 1  Manoel,  King  of  Portugal, 
sent  a  Jesuit  priest,  one  Quadra,  to  the  Kongo  and 
instructed  him  to  cross  overland  to  Abyssinia,  where  it 
was  known  there  were  evidences  of  the  survival  of  a 
primitive  form  of  Christianity.  In  1526  and  1537  two 
others,  Jesuits  probably,  Castro  and  Pacheco,  had  pro- 
posed a  similar  journey;  while  in  1546  King  John  III  of 
Portugal,  he  who  introduced  the  Inquisition  into  his 
domains  about  1526,  had  recommended  the  Portuguese 
missionaries,  then  already  in  Abyssinia  in  considerable 
numbers,  to  try  to  push  their  way  westward  across  the 
continent  to  the  mouth  of  the  Kongo.  In  that  great, 
interesting,  and  most  instructive  series  entitled  "Jesuit 
Travels,"  there  is  a  statement  of  a  missionary,  a  Jesuit, 
of  course,  who  crossed  Africa  at  some  time  between  1550 
and  1560  and  endeavoured,  to  the  best  of  his  linguistic 
ability,  to  teach  the  natives  something  of  the  Christian 
reUgion.  In  1553  was  despatched  the  first  regularly 
organised  Jesuit  mission  to  Africa,  and  in  1592  Breto, 
one  of  the  successors  in  this  enterprise,  advocated  and 
attempted,  although  he  was  not  successful,  a  chain  of 
mission  stations  right  across  Africa  from  the  east  to  the 
west  coasts.  One  of  those  Jesuit  missionaries  to  Abys- 
sinia, Father  Paez,  claimed  to  have  been  the  first  to 
discover  the  actual  source  of  the  River  Nile,  redis- 
covered one  hundred  and  seventy  years  later,  in  1770, 
by  the  Scotchman  James  Bruce,  of  whom  it  is  said 


24  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

"he  will  always  remain  the  poet,  and  his  work,  Travels 
to  Discover  the  Sources  oj  the  Nile,  the  epic  of  African 
travel."  It  may  be  interpolated  here  that  Bruce  and 
WiUiam  D.  Cooley,  the  EngUsh  geographer  (died  1883), 
deny  the  correctness  of  Paez's  claim  and  contend  that  he 
was  merely  the  first  to  describe  a  portion  of  Central 
Africa  which  other  Portuguese  sojourners  in  Abyssinia 
had  visited  about  1595,  but  without  asserting  discovery 
of  the  actual  headwaters  of  the  Nile.  Bruce 's  discovery 
was  of  the  Blue  Nile  source. 

In  1606  one  Araglis  made  a  journey,  combining  explora- 
tion with  an  attempt  at  Christian  propaganda,  of  some 
four  hundred  miles  into  the  interior  from  the  coast  of  the 
Angola  territory  on  the  west  of  Africa.  Half  a  century 
later,  in  1663,  Godinho,  another  missionary,  recom- 
mended the  establishing  of  an  overland  route,  with 
mission  stations  at  regular  intervals;  and  Jaine,  another 
Jesuit,  stated  that,  according  to  reliable  information  he 
had  obtained,  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  travellers, 
on  peaceful  mission  bent,  from  going  from  the  northern 
Zambesi  Country,  on  the  east  coast,  right  across  the 
continent  to  Angola.  The  Jesuits  actually  penetrated 
from  the  Toka  (Batoka)  Plateau,  north  of  the  Zambesi 
River,  into  the  present  Rutsi  Country  above  Victoria 
Falls.  From  the  mouth  of  the  Zambesi  to  that  of  the 
Kunene,  in  what  is  now  German  Southwest  Africa,  is 
quite  half  the  distance  across  the  continent  in  a  straight 
line.  In  1798  Francisco  Jose  de  Lacerde  e  Almeida,  who 
was  sent  to  explore  the  Mozambique  Country,  where 
he  died  of  malarial  fever,  opened  up  some  eight  hundred 
square  miles  of  new  country  between  Mozambique  and 


^^^^B^' 

rs  » 

^^^^Et/  ^i&tr 

fe 

4iL 

^               ^^^^H 

^^^ 

Copyright,  Underwood  cr"  Underwood,  .V.  T. 

Victoria  Falls,  Middle  Zambf.si  River,  Rhodesia 

The  regatta  course  above  the  Falls,  where  aquatic  sports  are  much  in 

Javour  among  the  English  residents 


AFRICA    AS    THE    DARK    CONTINENT      25 

the  southeastern  lakes  of  the  Lualaba  district  (Kongo 
Free  State).  Lacerda  was  accompanied  by  a  Roman 
Catholic  chaplain.  So  that,  between  1500  and  1800,  at 
least  one  missionary  was  among  those  who  crossed  Africa 
and  actually  anticipated  Livingstone  in  this  hazardous 
enterprise. 

Without  burdening  the  reader  with  further  details 
(interesting  though  they  are)  of  pioneer  journeys  into 
the  heart  of  Africa  undertaken  by  representatives  of 
the  Roman  CathoUc  Church  during  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,  their  work  on  the  Sudan  Nile 
between  1848  and  1863  deserves  brief  mention.  In  1849 
Ignaz  Knoblecher,  at  that  time  the  head  of  an  Austrian 
mission,  undertook  what  was  really  an  exploring  tour  in 
the  cause  of  Christian  propaganda.  During  this  journey 
up  the  Nile  from  Khartum  to  Gondokoro  (Equatorial 
Province)  the  Jesuit  reached  the  Rejaf  Hill  (Logwek) 
4°  45'  N.  and  was  the  first  European  to  ascend  it.  Six 
years  later  Beltrame,  another  missionary,  travelled  up 
the  Blue  Nile  to  Rosieres.  Duryak,  Gossner,  Kauf- 
mann,  Kirchner,  Morlang,  Mosgau,  and  Vines  were 
also  Jesuit  explorers  as  well  as  evangelists,  and  to  them 
subsequent  travellers  who  worked  as  specialists  were 
greatly  indebted.  The  accounts  they  gave  of  research 
in  geography,  meteorological  observations,  ethnograph- 
ical and  linguistic  studies  greatly  expanded  the  knowl- 
edge of  Nile  lands  and  peoples.  August  Petermann 
(died  1878),  the  eminent  German  geographer,  admitted 
that  Duryak  and  Knoblecher  "kept  an  accurate  hygro- 
metrical  and  meteorological  register  with  great  precision 
and  scientific  regularity."    In  1878  Massaia,  by  reason 


26  AFRICATO-DAY 

of  his  influence  with  Menelik,  king  of  Abyssinia,  ob- 
tained permission  for  Antinosi,  an  Italian  explorer,  to 
establish  a  scientific  station  on  the  royal  estate.  In 
1880,  Duparquet  made  a  journey  from  Walfisch  Bay, 
German  South  West  Africa,  to  Omaruru  and  thence 
to  the  Ovampo  district  between  the  Kunene  and  the 
Okavanga  rivers.  In  1884  Ohrwalder,  an  Austrian 
Jesuit,  escaped  from  the  Mahdists  and  brought  out 
news  of  what  was  taking  place  in  the  Sudan  during 
the  dark  days  following  its  prolonged  closure  to  the 
outside  world.  This  information,  confirmed  and  empha- 
sised by  that  furnished  later  by  Alexander  Murdock 
Mackay,  first  mechanical  engineer  and  afterwards 
Protestant  missionary,  led  to  the  despatch  of  the  rehef 
expedition,  headed  by  Stanley,  to  which  reference  has 
already  been  made.  We  may  safely  say  that  practically 
all  Roman  Catholic  missionaries  in  Africa  were  explorers, 
and  that  a  good  many  of  them  were  in  the  field  before 
Livingstone. 

Turning  back,  in  the  matter  of  time,  in  order  to  take 
up  the  consideration  of  Protestant  missionary  effort  as 
contributing  greatly  towards  Africa's  emergence  into 
light,  we  find  that  as  long  ago  as  1661  two  members  of 
the  Quaker  fraternity  arrived  at  Alexandria  and  began 
preaching  to  the  Copts  and  the  Moslems  with,  it  is  said, 
some  slight  measure  of  success.  But  it  must  be  admitted 
that  there  was  not  conspicuous  zeal  displayed  by  Prot- 
estants during  the  rest  of  the  seventeenth  and  almost  all 
of  the  eighteenth  centuries.  This  does  not  mean  that 
there  was  no  effort  made,  but  that  it  was  desultory,  and 
precise  information  cannot  be   had  without   research, 


AFRICA    AS    THE    DARK    CONTINENT      27 

which  is  not  expedient.  It  is  to  be  assumed  that  the 
Dutch  colonists  in  South  Africa  were  accompanied  by 
clergymen,  and  that  these  did  something,  at  least,  among 
the  natives;  but  it  was  very  near  the  end  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  1792,  that  English  missionaries  entered 
Cape  Colony,  They  crossed  the  Orange  River  in  180 1 
and  entered  the  Chivana  Country.  In  18 12  Campbell, 
of  the  London  Society,  determined  the  course  of  the 
Orange  River,  and  in  1820  he,  with  Moffat,  discovered 
the  source  of  the  Limpopo  River  and  explored  a  good 
part  of  the  region  traversed  by  that  stream.  Early  in 
the  nineteenth  century  there  were  considerable  numbers 
of  Protestant  missionaries  in  the  field  and  their  success 
was  measured  by  the  numerous  converts,  but  the  deadly 
climate  prevented  the  prosecution  of  the  work  zealously, 
and  until  1887  the  Gold  Coast  was  practically  the  only 
field  in  the  west  of  Africa.  In  Central,  Eastern,  North 
Eastern,  and  West  Africa  Dr.  Nassau  explored  the 
reaches  of  the  Ogowai  River,  which  were  unknown  until 
then.  A  httle  later,  Grenfell  of  the  British  Baptist 
Mission,  discovered  the  Mobangi,  the  greatest  tributary 
of  the  Kongo.  In  1855  Erhard  and  Rebmann  made  a 
map  of  East  Africa  between  the  equator  and  14°  south 
latitude  and  for  about  sixteen  degrees  inland  from 
Zanzibar.  The  information  given  and  the  size  attrib- 
uted to  the  lakes  induced  the  Royal  Geographical 
Society  to  equip  Burton  for  his  great  and  successful 
expedition.  In  1877  the  Young  Men's  Missionary 
Society  of  Birmingham,  England,  entered  the  African 
mission  field  and  spread  Christianity  widely  throughout 
Natal.    Before  Stanley  had  completed  his  first  descent 


28  AFRICATO-DAY 

of  the  Kongo,  Tilly,  a  director  of  the  English  Calvinist 
Baptists,  had  invited  the  East  London  Institute  for 
Missions  to  join  in  sending  men  abroad;  so  that  prior 
to  Stanley's  reaching  Europe,  1878,  missionaries  were 
on  their  way  to  Central  Africa.  This  was  the  origin  of 
the  Livingstone  Mission.  It  was  the  intention  to  form 
a  chain  of  mission  stations  from  the  West  Coast  far  into 
the  interior  ;  these  were  to  be  self-supporting.  But  the 
plan  was  found  to  be  impracticable;  no  European  could 
safely  engage  in  the  necessary  manual  labour,  and  trade 
was  quite  out  of  the  question  because  the  natives  would 
have  misconstrued  the  motive  and  thought  the  mis- 
sionaries were  seeking  their  own  interests  in  the  profits. 
It  may  be  noted  here,  although  it  is  rather  parenthetical, 
that  Bishop  Colenso,  Natal,  for  a  time  entertained  differ- 
ent views  as  to  the  method  best  to  follow  in  Christian 
propaganda.  His  predecessors  had  advocated  the  plan 
of  first  Christianise  and  then  civiHse ;  he  tried  the  other 
order,  but  speedily  confessed  it  was  a  failure.  The  ques- 
tion naturally  occurs  to  the  average  lay  observer,  why 
not  let  the  two  things  go  on  together,  hand  in  hand  ? 
David  Livingstone,  born  at  Blantyre  near  Glasgow, 
Scotland,  March  19,  1813,  died  at  Chitambo,  Central 
Africa,  April  30,  1873,  travelled  twenty-nine  thousand 
miles  in  Africa,  practically  all  of  it  on  foot,  and  added 
one  million  square  miles  to  the  known  areas,  or  about 
one-twelfth  of  the  total  continent.  He  discovered  Lake 
Ngami  in  1849  (it  now  hes  within  British  South  Africa's 
sphere  of  influence);  in  185 1  the  Zambesi  River  in  the 
middle  of  the  continent,  and  determined  its  course  to  the 
Indian  Ocean;  in  1856  the  Victoria  Falls;  in  1859  two 


AFRICA    AS    THE    DARK    CONTINENT      29 

longitudinal  ridges  flanking  the  great  Southern-Central 
African  Valley,  ascended  the  Shire  River,  by  way  of 
Murchison  Cataracts  and  Lake  Shirwa.  His  so-called 
rediscovery  of  Lake  Nyasa  was  virtually  an  original  one, 
since  its  reputed  position  was  inaccurate.  Although  ill 
at  the  time,  he  fixed  the  true  orientation  of  Lake  Tan- 
ganyika, and  was  the  first  European  to  traverse  its 
length.  In  1867  he  discovered  Lake  Mweru  (Moero); 
in  1868  Lake  Bangiweolo,  the  Lualaba  stem  of  the 
Kongo  River,  opened  up  the  Nyema  (Manyema)  Coimtry, 
and,  supported  by  Stanley,  showed  that  Lake  Tangan- 
yika did  not  empty  northward  and  therefore  could  not 
feed  the  Nile.  Stanley  said  of  Livingstone:  "Li  the 
annals  of  exploration  of  the  dark  continent,  we  look  in 
vain  among  other  nationalities  for  such  a  name  as 
Livingstone's.  He  stands  pre-eminent  above  all;  he 
unites  the  best  qualities  of  other  explorers :  the  method- 
ical perseverance  of  Barth,  Moffat's  philo- Africanism, 
Rohlf's  enterprising  spirit,  Duveyrier's  fondness  for 
geographical  minutiae.  Burton's  literal  accuracy, 
Speke's  cheery  simplicity  and  seductive  honhommie; 
he  is  a  rare  human  mosaic,  a  glory  to  Britain.  But  to 
Burton,  Germany  can  show  Barth  and  France  Duveyrier, 
and  to  Speke,  the  first  can  show  Rohlf  and  the  latter 
Caille;  to  Cameron,  Germany  can  oppose  Nachtegaland 
to  Baker  Schweinfurth,  though  two  greater  opposites 
can  scarcely  be  imagined;  and  France  can  boast  of 
Compeigne  and  Brazza  (the  Italian).  But  Britain,  after 
producing  Bruce,  Clapperton,  Denham,  the  Landers,  and 
Park  excelled  even  herself  when  she  produced  the  strong 
and  perseverant  Scotchman."     There  are  several  most 


30  AFRICATO-DAY 

admirable  traits  with  which  we  justly  credit  Livingstone: 
first,  with  being  a  real  missionary;  second,  with  reclaim- 
ing South-Central  Africa  from  barbarism  and  sin;  and 
third,  with  doing  a  noble  work  in  contributing  towards 
the  suppression  of  the  slave  trade. 

Thus  it  becomes  manifest  that  a  major  share  of 
Africa's  emergence  from  darkness  into  light  is  attrib- 
utable directly  to  missionary  effort,  and  that  what  was 
feebly  begun  centuries  ago  and  revivified  in  the  last  one, 
is  marching  on  hand  in  hand  with  material  civiHsation. 
Naturally,  an  acquaintance  with  the  language  of  the 
strange  people  among  whom  they  are  working  is  of 
more  importance  to  the  missionary  than  it  is  to  the 
merchant,  yet  equal  with  the  needs  of  a  competent 
diplomat  or  consul.  Hence  we  find  the  missionaries 
in  Africa,  as  in  all  other  parts  of  the  world,  using  their 
command  of  language  for  (i)  Propaganda,  (2)  Philology, 
(3)  Natural  Sciences,  (4)  Arts,  Industries,  and  Com- 
merce, (5)  Advantages  to  be  conferred  by  colonisation, 
commerce,  and  civilisation,  (6)  Peace!  Schweinfurth 
says  that  American  missionaries  ''have  done  an  enormous 
amount  of  good."  Gordon  in  the  Sudan  said  that  no 
permanent  amehoration  of  conditions  there  could  possibly 
be  accomplished  without  the  aid  of  Christian  mission- 
aries. Schnitzer  (Emin  Pasha)  requested  the  co-opera- 
tion of  missionaries  for  the  Equatorial  Province  and 
would  have  defrayed  their  entire  expenses  had  there 
been  difficulty  on  this  score  for  the  home  boards.  O'Neill, 
British  Consul  to  Mozambique,  after  ten  years'  experi- 
ence, spoke  of  missionaries  as  contributing  much  to  the 
pacification  of  the  country  and  greatly  furthering  the 


AFRICA    AS    THE    DARK    CONTINENT      3I 

suppression  of  the  slave  trade.  Layard  said  the  same 
thing.  Mailland,  Governor  of  Cape  Colony  (1844-47), 
told  the  British  Government  that  more  depended  upon 
the  labours  of  missionaries  than  on  rifles  and  soldiers 
in  keeping  the  savages  quiet.  Groat,  an  American 
Congregational  missionary  who  had  been  working  suc- 
cessfully among  the  Zulus,  was  about  to  return  home 
because  his  Society  had  decided  to  withdraw  from  the 
field;  but  Mailland  sent  him  back  at  his  own  expense. 
The  good  work  done  in  Algiers  by  the  French  Roman 
Catholic  bishop,  Lavigerie,  is  praised  by  all  and  has 
gained  words  of  hearty  appreciation  from  military  men 
and  civilians  of  all  nations  and  creeds. 

In  Africa,  as  in  every  part  of  the  world,  history  repeats 
itself,  even  if  sometimes  the  order  of  procedure  varies  a 
httle.  Sometimes  it  is  the  trader  who  is  the  absolute 
pioneer;  in  which  case  the  later  effort  of  the  missionary 
is  likely  to  be  all  the  harder  —  and  so  it  was  in  most  of 
Africa.  But  there  was  no  satisfying  evidence  of  the 
breaking  away  of  darkness  until  there  came  those  who 
brought  the  message  from  God  and  also  tried  to  put  away 
the  love  of  strife,  so  that  there  might  be  something  of 
civilisation  in  its  highest  plane.  Gradually,  throughout 
the  great  continent  it  is  becoming  more  and  more 
evident  that  it  is  not  the  most  mihtary  nation  which 
leads  the  van,  but  that  this  post  is  held  by  those  who 
strive  for  peaceful  progress.* 

*  A  good  deal  of  information  in  this  chapter  was  derived  from  "  The 
Redemption  of  Africa,"  Frederick  Perry  Noble.  The  interested  reader 
who  desires  further  data  and  precise  statistics  is  heartily  referred  to 
that  book.  I  have  supplemented  Mr.  Noble's  statements  with  facts 
gained  from  my  own  observation.  —  J.  K.  G. 


CHAPTER  III 

NORTHERN  AFRICA 

BY  the  term  Northern  Africa,  a  very  indefinite  one 
at  best,  we  shall  mean  all  of  the  continent  north 
of  the  southern  Hmit  of  the  Sahara  and  a  line  extended 
eastward  to  include  the  Egyptian  Sudan  and  reaching 
the  Red  Sea  at  about  22°  north  latitude,  but  excluding 
Abyssinia  and  the  Italian  colony  of  Eritrea,  which  we 
shall  consider  under  the  title  of  East  Africa.  Just  south 
of  this  Northern  Africa  comes  what  we  call  Central 
Africa,  but  on  the  Atlantic  coast  it  falls  under  our 
division  of  West  Africa.  Now  the  Sahara  is  such  an 
important  and  interesting  part  of  this  continent  that  it 
deserves  a  chapter  to  itself;  and  as  for  Egypt,  it  would 
be  impossible  to  do  justice  to  that  great  and  absorbingly 
interesting  section  of  Northern  Africa  within  the  hmits 
of  this  chapter  without  neglecting  everything  else; 
therefore  it,  too,  is  excluded  here.  Consequently  we 
shall  restrict  ourselves  in  this  chapter  to  a  consideration 
of  the  four  countries  the  names  of  which  school  children 
were  formerly  allowed  to  rattle  oflf  so  glibly  as  almost 
to  be  rhythmical;  namely,  Morocco,  Algiers,  Tunis, 
and  TripoU.  That  is,  the  very  narrow  fringe  along  the 
Mediterranean  littoral;  although  Morocco  does  stretch 
for  a  long  distance  down  the  Atlantic  coast  and  Tripoli 
pushes    itself    quite    halfway   across   the    Sahara.    In 

32 


NORTHERN    AFRICA  33 

general  terms  it  is  the  great,  old  headquarters  in  Africa 
of  the  Islam  faith,  and  from  it  went  out  into  the  desert 
and  across  it  into  the  very  heart  of  the  Dark  Continent 
missionaries  in  such  numbers,  and  whose  success  was  so 
remarkable,  that  far  down  towards  Southern  Africa 
the  earliest  European  travellers  found  Mussulmans 
who  were  even  stricter,  in  the  rigid  observance  of  the 
faith,  than  were  those  who  lived  nearer  the  earthly  gate 
to  Paradise,  Mecca. 

Within  the  past  two  years  much  anxious  attention 
has  been  given  to  Morocco  and  there  were,  within  a  few 
months,  very  disquieting  signs  of  trouble,  in  that  part 
of  Africa,  which  might  involve  several  European  nations 
in  actual  war.  But  while  this  chapter  is  being  written 
the  indications  point  to  adjustment  without  recourse  to 
arms,  and  French  supremacy  appears  to  be  established 
in  Morocco.  Still,  the  episode  of  June  and  July,  191 1,  is 
so  typical  of  what  may  happen  at  almost  any  time  in  a 
Moorish  country,  and  its  repetition  may  so  easily  involve 
European  nations,  that  it  is  worth  while  giving  it  some 
attention;  for  it  really  represents  one  phase  of  Africa 
To-day  as  nothing  else  can  do. 

Just  what  portion  of  the  French  Kongo  will  be  ceded 
to  Germany  as  compensation  for  withdrawing  from 
Morocco  and  promising  to  keep  hands  off,  had  not  been 
oiSicially  announced,  but  it  was  assumed  to  be  of  value 
to  the  latter  country's  already  acquired  rights  in  the 
Kamerim  region ;  in  return  France  is  to  be  allowed  a  free 
hand  in  Morocco.  If  by  this  "free  hand"  was  meant 
that  the  administration  of  affairs  is  to  be  taken  up  by  the 
French  —  a  Protectorate,  in  other  words — it  can  hardly 


34  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

be  that  the  task  is  gomg  to  prove  an  easy  one.  The  seem- 
ing intention  of  the  French  Government  to  uphold  the 
authority  of  Sultan  Mulai  Hafid  and  his  Vizier  Glawi 
does  not  exactly  satisfy  our  ideas  of  doing  that  which 
is  for  the  best  interest  of  the  whole  country  and  all  the 
peoples.  While  apparently  the  recent  uprising  was 
directed  solely  at  the  Sultan  and  his  immediate  friends 
who  are  declared  to  have  given  themselves  up  to  robbery, 
"until  there  is  now  nothing  left  to  rob,"  to  have  com- 
mitted the  most  indecent  assaults  upon  women  every- 
where, and  to  have  brought  slavery  and  misery  on  all 
sides,  yet  the  attitude  of  the  tribesmen  was  not  hostile 
to  Europeans  —  the  rebellion  was  against  the  Sultan  and 
his  Vizier. 

But  we  know  too  well  that  when  such  a  revolt  is 
once  started  in  a  Moslem  country,  religious  fanaticism 
at  once  asserts  itself  and  the  fate  of  Christians  who  fall 
into  the  hands  of  the  turbulent  natives  is  rarely  anything 
but  that  which  means  death  for  the  men  and  worse  than 
death  for  the  women.  In  the  effort  to  restore  and 
maintain  order,  perhaps  France  was  right  in  insisting 
that  the  authority  of  the  (alleged)  legitimate  successor 
to  the  throne  should  be  upheld,  and  therefore  the  reUef 
expedition  was  justified  in  acting  as  it  did  in  Mulai 
Hafid's  behalf.  Of  its  humanitarian  motive  there  can 
be  but  one  opinion :  Europeans  —  Christians  —  were  in 
danger  and  they  had  to  be  saved,  if  possible.  No  one 
would  for  a  moment  belittle  the  successful  effort  of 
that  expedition  to  relieve  the  few  strangers  who  were 
shut  up  in  Fez  last  summer. 

But  the  motive  for  the  relief  expedition  was  greatly 


NORTHERN    AFRICA  35 

misunderstood  by  the  natives,  and  it  is  certain  that 
the  conduct  of  the  French  troops,  after  they  reached 
Fez,  left  something  to  be  desired  and  which  did  not 
tend  to  correct  entirely  the  misunderstanding  among 
the  rebellious  natives.  In  June,  191 1,  we  read  of  out- 
rages committed  by  the  Fez  garrison  and  of  remorseless 
reprisals  made  upon  neighbouring  villages  as  soon  as 
the  siege  was  raised.  Mulai  Hafid  had  sent  his  own 
troops,  under  the  command  of  French  officers,  and  these 
committed  wholesale  destruction  of  life,  expropriation  of 
property,  and  nameless  assaults,  until  stopped  by 
General'  Moinier  as  soon  as  he  understood  what  was 
being  done.  It  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  that  the 
Moors  felt  resentment  at  the  arrival  of  an  infidel  army 
which  lent  itself  —  even  if  but  for  a  short  time  —  to  the 
designs  of  their  hated  officials.  Of  course  Mulai  Hafid 
and  his  immediate  advisers  denied  stoutly  all  possibility 
of  there  being  a  savage  re-establishment  of  the  Sultan's 
power;  yet  their  acts  were  totally  opposed  to  the  spirit 
in  which  France  sent  succour  and  in  which  General 
Moinier  conducted  the  relief  operations. 

The  feeling  of  all  the  natives  who  are  opposed  to 
Mulai  Hafid,  and  information  justifies  the  statement 
that  numerically  they  are  in  the  majority  (although 
this  is  not  a  case  wherein  majority  rules!),  was  admi- 
rably expressed  in  a  letter  from  Akka  Duimeni,  chief 
of  the  Beni  M'Tir  tribe  and  leader  of  the  Berber  rebel- 
lion, extracts  from  which  were  printed  in  the  London 
Times  of  May  12,  191 1  (weekly  edition).  This  chief  is 
known  to  be  not  in  the  least  anti-European  and  not 
ultra-fanatical  in  religion.    After  some  general  state- 


36  AFRICATO-DAY 

ments  as  to  the  motive  of  the  rebellion  and  the  feelings  of 
the  people  towards  the  Sultan,  the  Vizier,  and  the  court 
favourites  (and  what  has  already  been  stated  in  this 
chapter  gives  an  idea  of  these  sentiments)  he  said:  "  We 
discovered  that  Europeans  had  no  pity;  but  we  still 
looked  for  justice.  What  have  we  found?  The  Sultan 
and  the  Maghzen,  who  rob  wholesale  to  leave  us  to  die 
of  starvation,  and  who  have  brought  the  whole  country 
to  misery,  are  assisted  and  defended;  but  two  wretched 
soldiers  who  stole  a  pack-horse  and,  fearing  the  results, 
deserted  —  what  happened  to  them  less  than  three 
months  ago  in  Fez?  The  Europeans  intervened  and 
they  were  shot  pubHcly  in  the  presence  of  the  troops. 
What  law  of  God,  what  justice  of  man,  can  justify 
that?  What  can  we  do  now  but  die?  It  is  all  that  is  left 
to  us.  We  know  we  cannot  resist  the  French  troops  for 
long,  but  none  the  less  can  we  permit  them  to  invade 
the  country.  We  will  not  surrender;  we  will  not  cease 
from  [asserting]  our  cause  and  fighting  for  what  we  know 
to  be  our  rights,  so  long  as  Mulai  Hafid  remains  Sultan 
and  Glawi  his  Vizier.  Under  any  other  Sovereign  we 
will  disperse  in  peace  and  accept  all  international  agree- 
ments, but  this  man  and  his  Vizier  have  oppressed  us 
too  rigorously.  The  blood  of  our  slain,  the  cries  of  our 
children  call  us  to  avenge  them,  —  the  blood  of  our  slain 
and  other  blood!  But  a  few  weeks  ago  three  little  girls 
from  one  of  the  tribes  went  to  Fez  to  appeal  for  their 
father's  liberty.  When  they  arrived  he  was  already  dead. 
They  were  brutally  violated  by  the  Palace  attendants 
and  sent  home.  Had  it  not  been  for  European  assist- 
ance [extended  to  our  oppressor],  peace   would  have 


NORTHERN    AFRICA  37 

reigned  months  ago  and  a  new  Sultan  would  be  on 
the  throne.  You  know  now  to  what  purpose  Europe's 
assistance  is  put,  and  it  will  be  her  everlasting  disgrace 
that  she  has  consented  to  and  connived  at  the  prolonga- 
tion of  this  period."  The  letter  concludes  with  these 
words:  "By  the  service  I  once  rendered  you,  by  our 
friendship  which  has  never  ceased,  and  in  the  name  of  the 
God  of  mercy  and  justice,  and  in  the  name  of  our  people, 
whom  you  know  and  love,  I  call  upon  you  to  make 
known  my  message." 

Following  quickly  upon  France's  action  in  sending 
troops  into  Morocco  came  Germany's  in  sending  a  war- 
ship to  Agadir,  an  open  roadstead  moderately  protected 
by  headlands  and  five  hundred  miles  south  of  the  Straits 
of  Gibraltar.  Germany's  contention  was  that  the  possi- 
ble occupation  of  Morocco  by  France  was  a  breach  of 
the  Algeciras  Act  and  restored  to  all  Powers  signatory  to 
that  Act  freedom  of  action.  There  were  German  firms 
interested  south  of  Morocco,  and  if  Agadir  were  opened 
it  would  be  a  natural  outlet  of  the  Sus  district.  It 
seemed  for  a  time  as  if  the  five  European  Powers, — 
France,  Germany,  Great  Britain,  Spain,  and  Russia  as 
the  ally  of  France,  — would  be  required  to  enter  into 
further  negotiations  to  restore  peace  in  Morocco;  and  if 
this  necessity  was  evaded,  nevertheless  conditions  indicate 
something  of  what  is  to  be  seen  in  at  least  one  part  of 
Africa  To-day  and  no  one  will  say  they  are  satisfactory. 

The  French  Government  had  decided  to  re-enforce 
the  French  troops  at  Casablanca  (Dar-el-Beida,  about 
midway  between  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  and  Agadir), 
and  drew  up  an  agreement  with  the  Maghzen  for  the 


38  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

purpose  of  supplying  the  Sultan  with  financial  means  to 
establish  a  serviceable  army  of  five  thousand  troops, 
to  be  drilled  and  commanded  by  French  officers,  and  to 
assist  in  the  upkeep  of  the  palace.  There  was  to  be  an 
issue  of  two  successive  loans  through  the  agency  of  the 
Morocco  State  Bank.  France  intimated  to  the  Shereefian 
(the  chief  magistrates)  her  willingness  to  renounce  tem- 
porarily the  annual  installments  of  the  war  indemnity 
due  her.  It  is  hardly  surprising  that  all  of  this  was  con- 
strued by  Germany  as  inimical  to  her  position ;  nor  is  it 
astonishing  that  Great  Britain  threw  her  influence  into 
the  scale  with  France,  because  the  total  maritime  trade 
of  Morocco  for  the  year  1909  (the  latest  for  which 
statistics  are  readily  available)  amounted  to  £4,600,000, 
an  increase  of  £800,000  over  the  previous  year:  but 
Great  Britain's  share  in  this  trade  increased  propor- 
tionately more  than  did  that  of  any  other  European 
Power.  France  showed  an  increase  of  £90,000,  Great 
Britain  £430,000. 

This  extreme  northern  strip  of  Africa  has  been  most 
appropriately  called  "The  Land  of  Winter  Sunbeams," 
and  it  is  yearly  attracting  more  travellers  who  seek  for 
mildness  of  climate,  picturesque  scenery,  and  variety 
with  opportunity  of  seeing  something  of  a  civilisation 
that  is  still  strange,  although  it  is  fast  becoming  Euro- 
peanised  and  commonplace.  Or,  if  there  is  a  desire  to 
combine  with  much  of  indolence  a  Httle  of  energetic 
activity,  in  the  form  of  mountain  climbing,  there  is  the 
Atlas  range,  that  attains  its  greatest  height  in  Morocco 
and  stretches  oJff  to  the  east,  gradually  becoming  lower 
and  lower  until  it  runs  out  to  nothing  in  the  extreme 


/•jh/  .-^rit^  .  iW  ■Hi. 


w^m 


PJmlo,  Underwood  b"  Underwood,  .V.  Y. 

The  Palace  at  Fez 
The  Sultan  arriving  to  receive  the  tribes  at  a  Jeast 


NORTHERN    AFRICA  39 

northeast  of  Tunis.  There  yet  remain  some  very  toler- 
able peaks  to  be  conquered,  some  of  them  between 
thirteen  and  fourteen  thousand  feet  in  elevation,  possibly 
more;  but  the  attempt  to  reach  those  summits  is  still 
attended  with  risk  because  of  the  turbulent  natives,  as 
fond  of  backsheesh  as  are  the  Corsican  brigands  of  ransom, 
and  because  these  mountains  are  infested  with  danger- 
ous wild  beasts.  These  things  must  make  the  would-be 
mountain  climber  give  careful  heed  to  his  plans  ere  he 
ventures. 

It  is  more  consistent  with  our  own  ideas  to  limit 
the  Atlas  range  to  the  chain  which  begins  in  the  ex- 
treme southwest  of  Morocco,  back  of  Cape  Non,  that 
so  long  said  "thus  far  and  no  farther"  to  the  early 
Portuguese  adventurers,  and  extends  to  Tunis,  excluding 
the  lower  hills  which  are  sometimes  included  in  the  Atlas 
range  and  go  on  into  Tripoli.  These  true  Atlas  moun- 
tains, except  the  tops  of  the  highest  peaks,  are  generally 
well  covered  with  forests,  pine,  oak,  cork,  white  poplar, 
walnut,  chestnut,  and  other  trees,  and  in  them  many 
minerals  are  found — lead,  copper,  antimony,  sulphur, 
and  even  gold  and  silver.  There  are  not,  there  cannot 
well  be,  any  rivers  of  importance;  those  which  run  off 
towards  the  south  are  quickly  absorbed  in  the  desert 
sands;  those  flowing  north  have  too  short  a  life  to  attain 
any  appreciable  size — about  three  hundred  and  seventy 
miles  is  the  measure  of  the  longest,  from  source  to 
mouth.  None  of  the  Atlas  peaks  is  snow-covered  all 
the  year  round,  but  on  some  of  them  the  snow  Ues  until 
well  into  June;  and  the  contrast  between  their  cold  look 
and  the  heat  of  the  coast  is  great  indeed. 


40  AFRICATO-DAY 

Morocco  is  well  defined,  geographically,  on  the  north 
by  the  Mediterranean  and  on  the  west  by  the  Atlantic; 
while  the  boundary  on  the  east,  between  this  state  and 
Algeria,  has  been  fiixed,  although  in  a  most  arbitrary 
manner,  by  the  treaty  of  1844.  But  towards  the  south- 
east, the  line  which  separates  the  province  from  the 
officially  unappropriated  part  of  the  Sahara  and  that, 
too,  on  the  extreme  south,  had  not  yet  been  clearly 
established  until  recently,  when  the  Spanish  colony  of 
Rio  d'  Oro  was  delimited.  It  is  well  for  the  people  of 
Morocco  that  Nature  has  seen  fit  to  build  the  Atlas  range 
as  a  barrier  to  the  encroachments  of  the  desert  sands 
from  the  southeast;  for  if  it  were  not  for  this  it  is  prob- 
able that  the  fields  would  be  converted  into  desert, 
although  the  prevailing  winds  rather  tend  to  drive 
the  sand  in  the  opposite  direction,  towards  the  east. 
Notwithstanding  the  decidedly  disagreeable  character  of 
the  prominence  given  to  Morocco  during  the  past  few 
years,  it  yet  remains  that  portion  of  North  Africa  about 
which  European  and  American  information  is  most 
deficient,  and  the  ordinary  maps  are  based  upon  the  most 
unscientific  material  supplemented  by  probabilities  and 
conjecture.  It  is  reasonably  safe  to  say,  however,  that 
all  of  this  uncertainty  will  be  removed  ere  this  twentieth 
century  has  grown  much  older.  Should  France  really  be 
granted  a  free  hand,  a  trigonometrical  survey  will  surely 
be  one  of  the  first  things  undertaken. 

The  seacoasts  —  Mediterranean  and  Atlantic  —  have 
been  well  known  for  many  centuries,  and  the  latter  is 
especially  remarkable  for  its  regularity  and  sameness, 
"not  a  single  gulf  or  noteworthy  estuary  occurs  through- 


NORTHERNAFRICA  4I 

out  its  whole  length."  (Enc.  Brit.)  From  the  same 
authority  is  taken  the  following  extract,  which  rather 
appeals  to  the  tourist:  "The  prickly  pear  forms  one  of 
the  features  of  the  landscape  from  the  coast  up  to  the 
slopes  of  the  mountains.  The  cork  tree,  common  in  the 
time  of  Addison,  has  lost  ground  enormously,  though  it 
probably  forms  the  staple  of  the  Ma'mura  forest,  which 
extends  some  twenty  miles  between  the  Bu  Rakrak  and 
the  Sebu.  Though  not  so  widespread  as  in  Algeria  or 
some  districts  of  Europe,  the  palmetto  is  often  locally 
very  abundant.  Citrons,  lemons,  limes  (sweet  and  sour), 
shaddocks,  mulberries,  walnuts,  and  chestnuts  are 
conmion  in  many  parts.  Tetuan  is  famous  for  oranges 
[the  'Tangerenes'],  Meknes  for  quinces,  Morocco  for 
pomegranates,  Fez  for  figs,  Tafilelt  and  Akka  for  dates, 
Sus  for  almonds,  Dukalla  for  melons,  Tagodast,  Edante- 
nan,  and  Rabat  for  grapes,  and  Tarudant  for  oUves. 
The  grape  is  extensively  cultivated  and  the  Jews  manu- 
facture crude  but  palatable  wines.  Sugar,  once  grown 
in  Sus  to  supply  the  demands  of  the  whole  of  Morocco, 
has  disappeared.  Both  hemp  and  tobacco  are  cultivated 
under  the  restrictions  of  an  imperial  monopoly,  —  the 
former  (of  prime  quaUty)  being  largely  used  as  hasheesh, 
the  latter,  though  never  smoked,  as  snuff.  Barley  is  the 
most  usual  cereal,  but  excellent  crops  of  wheat,  maize, 
millet,  rye,  beans,  pease,  chick-peas,  and  canary-seed  are 
also  obtained.  Potatoes  are  coming  into  favour  in  cer- 
tain districts.  It  is  still  true,  as  in  the  time  of  Addison, 
that  the  Moors  'seldom  reap  more  than  will  bring  the 
year  about,'  and  the  ifailure  of  a  single  harvest  causes 
inevitable  death."    Yet  other  authorities  tell  of  wonder- 


42  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

ful  underground  granaries  wherein  are  stored  supplies  of 
foodstuffs  to  last  for  years. 

Algeria  as  to-day  is,  of  course,  France's  most  impor- 
tant colony,  and  in  all  of  the  principal  places  the  visitor 
feels  almost  as  if  in  Europe;  yet  there  is  always  the 
air  of  being  away  from  "gay  Paree"  or  any  other  home 
city.  The  north,  east,  and  west  boundaries  are  well 
defined,  but  the  southern  line  is  still  most  vague,  and  it  is 
not  likely  that  "vested  interests"  of  other  Powers  will 
for  a  long  time  to  come  demand  a  strict  delimitation  of 
France's  sphere  of  influence  to  and  beyond  the  Niger 
River.  The  coast-line  is  already  well  equipped  with  a 
railway  from  Oran  to  Tunis,  and  there  are  many  short 
branches  running  back  into  the  hills,  already  presaging 
an  extension  of  a  great  trunk  line  across  the  Sahara  via 
Timbuctoo  to  the  Gulf  of  Guinea,  and  in  the  east  towards 
the  French  Sudan  and  Kongo  region.  The  natives  have 
for  a  long  while  spoken  of  two  distinct  zones,  the  Tell 
and  the  Sahara,  running  east  and  west.  The  former  is 
the  belt  of  truly  arable  soil,  the  "corn  land,"  along  the 
Mediterranean,  and  it  is  a  series  of  fertile  swales  in 
which  grow  grain  of  many  kinds,  especially  wheat  and 
barley.  Here  were  the  great  granaries  that  made  Africa 
so  famous  in  ancient  times,  as  has  already  been  told. 
The  Sahara  zone  is  not,  strictly  speaking,  a  part  of  that 
great  desert,  although  it  is  sometimes  so  called;  but 
there  are  here,  again,  two  parallel  sections:  the  northern 
is  mountainous,  yet  very  fertile  in  spots,  and  here  are 
some  of  the  greatest  fruit  orchards;  the  southern  belt, 
bordering  the  Great  Desert  and  projecting  most  in- 
definitely into  it,  is  made  up  largely  of  oases,  whose 


NORTHERN    AFRICA  43 

inhabitants  are  shepherds  and  gardeners.  Throughout, 
the  mountainous  regions  are  covered  with  extensive 
forests,  but  the  lack  of  good  roads  and  navigable  rivers 
has  prevented  the  French  from  deriving  much  benefit 
from  this  timber.  There  is  temptation  to  dwell  here 
upon  the  interesting  history  pf  this  great  French  colony, 
but  it  must  be  resisted  because  of  limitations  of  space. 
It  is,  however,  but  right  to  give  the  following  extract 
from  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica:  *'The  villages  of  the 
Sahara  [zone]  are  surrounded  by  belts  of  fruit  trees,  of 
which  the  [date]  palm  is  the  chief,  though  there  are  also 
pomegranate,  fig,  apricot,  peach,  and  other  trees  and 
vines.  On  the  mountain  ranges  near  the  coast  are  ex- 
tensive forests  of  various  species  of  oak,  pine,  cedar,  ehn, 
ash,  maple,  olive,  etc.  The  cork  tree  is  also  very  common. 
The  trees,  especially  the  cedars  and  oaks,  are  frequently 
of  gigantic  size.  Great  injury  is  often  done  to  the 
forests  by  the  people  annually  burning  up  the  grass  of 
their  fields.  In  this  way  extensive  forests  are  sometimes 
consumed.  .  .  .  Locusts  are  common,  and  sometimes  do 
great  damage  to  the  crops.  One  of  the  severest  inva- 
sions of  these  pests  ever  known  occurred  in  1866,  when 
,the  crops  were  nearly  all  destroyed,  and  the  loss  sus- 
tained by  the  colonists  was  estimated  at  £800,000." 
There  is  one  part  of  Algeria  which  has  the  unenviable 
reputation  of  being  one  of  the  hottest  places  on  earth, 
ranking  with  Death  Valley,  California,  and  the  head  of 
the  Persian  Gulf.  On  July  17,  1879,  the  thermometer 
registered  124°   F.  in  the  shade! 

Tunis.     In  spite  of  a  promise  made,  according  to  the 
authority  just  quoted,  that  France  did  not  intend  to 


44  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

maintain  proprietary  rights  after  carrying  out  punitive 
measures,  found  necessary  because  of  the  recrudescence 
of  piracy,  the  Regency  of  little  Tunis,  which  was  formerly 
one  of  the  Barbary  States  of  North  Africa,  has  been  since 
1 88 1  a  dependency  of  France,  whose  resident-general 
exercises  all  real  authority  within  the  nominal  dominions 
of  the  Bey  of  Tunis.  Where  it  adjoins  Algeria  and 
Tripoli,  the  borders  are  defined  with  reasonable  clearness 
and  the  coast-line  is  determined;  but  along  the  south 
the  frontier  line  extends  somewhat  indefinitely  into  the 
Sahara.  Were  greater  attention  given  to  catering  to  the 
wants  of  winter  travellers,  Tunis  would  be  an  agreeable 
place  for  those  who  seek  "Winter  Sunbeams,"  because 
the  mean  temperature  of  the  winter  or  rainy  season  is 
60°  F.  in  the  northern  part  of  the  country,  at  Susa  or 
the  capital,  Tunis;  but  at  present  there  is  little  on  the 
west,  to  draw  the  tourist  away  from  Algeria,  and  simply 
nothing  in  Tunis  on  the  east  to  set  off  against  the 
attractions  of  Egypt  or,  but  a  short  distance  beyond 
Barca,  of  Tripoli. 

Tripoli  or  Fezzan,  including  Barca,  is  the  last  of  these 
North  African  States  to  be  discussed  here;  and  again, 
excepting  the  sea-front  and  the  northwestern  border, 
where  it  marches  with  Tunis,  the  boundaries  are  most 
indefinite,  for  the  actual  frontier  in  or  along  the  Libyan 
Desert  (Egypt)  and  that  in  the  Sahara  have  yet  to 
be  established.  Since  1835  Tripoli  has  lost  the  semi- 
independent  character  of  a  regency,  which  it  formerly 
enjoyed  in  common  with  Tunis,  and  has  become  a 
vilayet  or  outlying  province  of  the  Turkish  Empire. 
There  are  extensive  ruins  which  have  not  yet  lost  all 


NORTHERNAFRICA  45 

attraction  for  the  archaeologist.  The  strip  of  fertile 
land  along  the  Mediterranean  is  narrow,  yet  the  country 
produces  considerable  grain,  and  the  dates  of  Tripoli 
have  the  reputation  of  being  the  finest  in  all  North 
Africa,  if  not  in  the  whole  world.  The  wide  sandy  plains 
and  rocky,  mountainous  regions  of  the  interior  and  south 
are  practically  non-productive.  The  country  is,  as  a 
whole,  badly  watered;  the  rivers  are  small  and  the 
desert  wells  and  watering  places  are  often  dry.  It  is 
strange  how  httle  attention  has  been  given  in  modern 
times  to  the  spacious  harbours  of  Tibruk  and  Bomba, 
but  until  progressive  capitalists  decide  to  build  a  railway 
to  Lake  Chad,  to  reach  the  populated  Sudan,  there  is 
not  likely  to  be  much  use  made  of  these  ports.  "In 
consequence  of  recent  events  in  Tunis,  Tripoli  has  become 
the  last  surviving  centre  of  the  caravan  trade  of  Northern 
Africa.  It  is  at  least  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  nearer 
the  great  marts  of  the  interior  than  either  Tunis  or 
Algeria.  A  large  proportion  of  the  commerce  of  Tripoli 
is  in  the  hands  of  British  merchants  or  dealers  in  British 
goods,  who  send  cloth,  cutlery,  and  cotton  fabrics  south- 
wards and  receive  in  return  esparto  grass,  ivory,  and 
ostrich  feathers."* 

In  the  next  chapter  we  shall  discuss  the  peoples  and 
tribes  of  these  four  North  African  countries,  and  then 
it  will  be  seen  what  absorbingly  interesting  problems 
are  yet  waiting  to  be  solved  by  the  student  of  sociology 
and  anthropology. 

Since  this  chapter  was  written  war  has  been  declared 
by  Italy  against  Turkey  and  a  demand  made  for  the 

*  Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 


46  AFRICATO-DAY 

ceding  of  the  entire  province  of  Tripoli  to  the  former 
country.  Those  who  have  made  themselves  familiar 
with  the  story  of  events  in  Northern  Africa  during  the 
last  twenty  years  will  hardly  be  surprised  either  at 
the  declaration  of  war  or  at  the  demand.  When  Italy 
evinced  a  disposition  to  make  a  somewhat  similar 
demand,  towards  the  end  of  the  last  century,  and 
obtained  from  Great  Britain  reasonable  assurance  that 
the  latter  would  not  look  upon  the  former's  ambitions 
unfavourably,  it  was  pretty  well  understood  that, 
although  conditions  at  that  moment  seemed  to  be 
adverse,  Italy  would  eventually  accompHsh  her  pur- 
pose, and  thereby  drive  the  Turks  from  all  active  con- 
trol in  Africa ;  and  it  is  the  general  consensus  of  opinion 
that  it  is  well  this  should  be,  although  there  are  not 
wanting  many  intelHgent  and  unprejudiced  observers 
who  disapprove  strongly  of  the  methods  to  which  Italy 
has  had  recourse  in  accomplishing  her  objects. 

Yet  if  we  investigate  carefully  the  conditions  that 
existed  in  Tripoli  and  its  hinterland,  under  Turkish 
administration,  we  find  that  in  the  territories  which  that 
government  had  been  controlling,  there  yet  existed  an 
active  and  cruel  slave  trade  which  should  have  been  sup- 
pressed long  since.  It  seems  as  if  this  buying  and  hold- 
ing of  slaves  must  be  a  necessary  concomitant  of  Turkish 
control  in  any  part  of  Africa.  It  is  alleged  even  that 
some  Turks  engage  in  the  trade  as  a  sort  of  pastime; 
and  if  transfer  of  possessory  rights  to  Italy  holds  reason- 
able assurance  of  the  suppression  of  this  business, 
humanitarians  should  not  cavil  too  much  at  the  means 
Italy  employs  to  accomplish  this  desirable  end.    It  is, 


NORTHERN    AFRICA  47 

however,  useless  and  untrue  for  the  Italian  Government 
to  pretend  that  its  subjects  were  in  personal  danger  or 
even  treated  unfairly  by  Turkish  officials  in  TripoU,  or 
that  their  property  and  material  rights  were  endangered, 
and  the  allegation  to  the  contrary  is  but  a  pretence 
after  all.  Still,  ffimsier  pretences  than  this  have  been 
found  or  made,  many  times  before  this,  sufficient  founda- 
tion upon  which  to  base  a  declaration  of  war.  The  fact 
that  Italy  seems  to  have  relied  more  upon  British  com- 
placency and  French  indifference  than  upon  German 
or  Austrian  co-operation  tends  rather  to  make  us 
think  of  her  act  as  discrediting  the  famous  Triple  Alli- 
ance; but  there  have  been  so  many  events  in  late  years 
which  justified  the  suspicion  that  the  great  alHance  is 
more  a  name  than  an  effective  combination,  aggressive, 
defensive,  or  simply  preventive,  as  to  make  this  latest 
(possible)  imputation  upon  it  not  in  the  least  astonish- 
ing. With  Great  Britain  as  a  neighbour  on  one  side 
and  France  on  the  other,  Italy,  in  Africa,  will  be  almost 
a  member  of  the  entente  cordiale. 

Intrinsically,  the  territory  which  Italy  seems  to  have 
added  to  her  domain  is  not  of  great  value.  The  volume 
of  trade  passing  over  the  caravan  route  to  the  Lake 
Chad  district  is  not  very  large,  and  it  is  likely  to 
decrease  to  even  smaller  proportions  with  the  activities 
of  the  Egyptian  influence  in  the  Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan 
diverting  some  of  this  trade  into  the  Nile  Valley,  and 
with  French  effort  to  deflect  more  of  it  westward  into 
French  Sudan.  It  is  highly  probable  that  Italian  effort 
may  accomplish  something  in  utilising  the  Tripolitan 
harbours,  which  have  been  mentioned,  and  it  is  not 


48  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

impossible  that  Italy  may  undertake  the  building  of  a 
railway  from  Tripoli  to  Lake  Chad,  along  the  present 
caravan  route;  although  in  the  light  of  present  knowl- 
edge this  must  be  called,  commercially  and  industrially, 
a  venturesome  undertaking.  Physically,  it  is  not 
remarkably  difficult;  yet  the  Libyan  Desert  offers  but 
scanty  inducement  in  the  matter  of  local  traffic,  except 
that  everywhere  in  Africa  the  natives  have  taken  so 
kindly  to  railway  travel  that  passenger  trains  are  said 
to  be  crowded  on  every  line  now  opened,  and  this  source 
of  revenue  may  go  a  good  way  towards  jdelding  profit- 
able returns  on  the  investment.  It  is  not  likely  that 
any  objection  would  be  raised  by  the  Anglo-Egyptian 
or  the  French  Government  on  the  ground  that  the 
Tripoli-Chad  line  would  be  a  parallel  rival  to  the  Cape 
to  Cairo  or  the  Algiers-Timbuctoo  fine;  the  interven- 
ing distance,  in  both  directions,  is  too  great  to  justify 
apprehension. 

Much  has  been  said  of  the  possibility  of  trouble  for 
Italy  with  the  Senussi  when  she  has  secured  possession 
of  the  entire  province  of  Tripoli  and,  with  the  con- 
currence of  the  Anglo-Egyptian  Condominium  and 
France,  determined  the  southern  boundaries  of  the 
colony.  This,  however,  we  think  is  something  that  has 
been  unduly  exaggerated.  The  most  competent  ob- 
server of  recent  years,  Mr.  Hanns  Vischer,  gives  these 
Senussi  people  a  fairly  good  reputation,  and  their  alle- 
giance to  Islamism  is  not  so  virile  as  to  justify  serious 
apprehension  of  their  declaring  a  "Holy  War"  to 
resist  annexation  and  control  by  Christian  Italy. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  PEOPLES  AND  TRIBES  OF  NORTHERN  AFRICA 

THERE  are  not  many  places  on  this  earth  where, 
in  such  a  comparatively  small  area,  so  great  diver- 
sity in  racial  characteristics,  degree  of  civilisation,  and 
every  phase  of  Hfe  is  to  be  noted  as  in  this  relatively 
small  section  of  the  great  continent,  the  part  known  as 
Northern  Africa.  It  is  quite  impossible  to  give  even  a 
satisfactory  approximation  of  the  size  of  the  four  States 
which  have  been  included  in  this  section,  for  the  reasons 
that  were  given  in  the  last  chapter  —  that  is  to  say,  the 
absolute  indefiniteness  of  their  interior,  southern,  boun- 
daries; but  we  may  say  that,  excluding  the  Sahara  tract 
and  the  Tuat  district  of  Morocco,  the  Algerine  desert 
quite  beyond  the  actual  sphere  of  French  influence,  and 
guessing  (somewhat  wildly,  to  be  sure)  at  the  southern 
boundary  of  TripoU,  the  aggregate  of  the  four  countries 
is  something  over  half  a  million  square  miles  and  the 
population  something  like  fifteen  milHons,  including  all 
races  and  peoples,  which  indicates  a  very  sparsely  settled 
territory  —  only  about  thirty  to  the  square  mile. 

Within  this  area  the  peoples  are  divided,  racially, 
thus:  I.  Kabyles,  or  Berbers,  who  represent  the  aborig- 
inal inhabitants,  and  who  have  preserved,  to  a  some- 
what remarkable  degree,  their  purity;  2.  The  Arabs; 
3.  The  Moors;    4.  The  Jews;    5.  The  Turks;    6.  The 

49 


50  AFRICATO-DAY 

Kolouges,  descendants  of  Turks  by  native  women,  but 
left  by  their  fathers  to  shift  for  themselves;  7.  The 
Negroes,  and,  8.  The  Mozabites,  an  African  race  of 
people  who  have,  in  some  strange  way,  sifted  through 
the  other  peoples  and  reached  the  shores  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, where  they  are  the  chief  manual  labourers  — 
the  longshoremen,  stevedores,  and  roustabouts.  There 
are,  of  course,  a  great  many  Europeans,  of  whom  some 
may  properly  be  called  permanent  residents;  while  the 
great  majority  are  in  the  several  countries  for  but  a 
short  time,  still  thinking  of  "home"  as  certainly  across 
the  sea  and  of  the  happy  time  when  they  may  return 
to  the  homeland. 

In  a  most  entertaining  book,  and  yet  one  that  is 
scientifically  accurate  enough  to  satisfy  the  demands  of 
most  people  for  precise  information  as  at  that  certain 
time,  Samuel  S.  Cox  tells  of  his  ''Search  for  Winter 
Sunbeams";  that  is,  his  experiences  in  Africa  half  a 
century  ago.  The  book  is  now  but  seldom  read,  and 
yet  the  information  which  we  are  about  to  borrow  from 
it  concerning  the  Kabyles  is  quite  as  apposite  to-day  as 
it  was  when  "Sunset"  Cox  wrote  about  those  interesting 
people.  Inverted  commas  are  not  inserted  to  indicate 
an  exact  quotation,  because  the  expressions  have  been 
somewhat  modified  to  adapt  them  to  our  present  pur- 
poses. The  Kabyles  in  the  French  colony  of  Algeria 
are  seen,  perhaps,  to  best  advantage  at  Tizzi  Buzi 
{Tiziuzi),  between  the  city  of  Algiers  and  Fort  Napoleon 
on  the  sides  of  one  of  the  highest  of  the  Eastern  Atlas 
range  of  mountains,  the  chain  which  runs  from  Tunis 
westward  through  Algeria  and  Morocco  to  the  Atlantic 


PEOPLES  OF  NORTHERN  AFRICA   51 

coast  near  Cape  Non.  The  loftiest  peaks  of  this  range 
are  likely  to  be  "silver-tipped"  save  in  the  heat  of  mid- 
summer, and  strange  stories  are  told  of  the  early  French 
troops  leaving  the  plains  in  summer  outfit,  to  return  in 
a  day  or  two  with  frosted  hands  and  feet,  much  to  their 
amazement. 

Perhaps  the  Kabyles  do  not  appear  so  well  as  we  read 
of  them  in  history  as  do  the  Arabs;  they  do  not  dress  so 
statuesquely;  they  wear  no  fetching  sashes  or  cinctures; 
no  Jez  or  abundant  turban  hides  the  head.  They  are 
just  common  people  who  work  hard,  raise  a  great  deal 
of  grain  —  as  Europeans,  in  ages  long  past,  knew  to 
their  great  and  endless  comfort;  attend  to  their  flocks 
most  zealously;  make  local  laws  which  (speaking  in 
general  terms  and  having  due  regard  to  France's  super- 
vision) they  obey  faithfully;  fight  bravely  and  well,  when 
they  are  pushed  to  it,  but  not  seeking  any  needless 
quarrel  merely  for  the  gratification  of  seeing  blood  flow, 
and  not  prone  to  raids  and  depredations;  holding  to  the 
tenets  of  the  religion  of  this  country,  Islamism,  with  as 
earnest  a  soul  as  any  class  of  labourers,  patriots,  or 
religionists  on  earth.  It  may  easily  be  proved,  by  the 
ancient  words  of  their  language  preserved  in  classical 
writings,  that  the  Kabyles  (Berbers)  were  the  original 
occupants  of  the  whole  of  this  Northern  Africa,  and  that 
they  spread  well  down  into  the  Sahara.  They  still  are 
not  only  the  most  numerous,  but  the  most  industrious 
and  civilisable  section  of  all  the  native  races.  They 
tickle  the  ribs  of  old  Atlas  till  he  laughs  with  plenty! 
While  the  Arab  is  still  by  preference  a  dweller  in  tents, 
a  nomad,  the  Kabyle  almost  invariably  builds  for  him- 


52  AFRICATO-DAY 

self  a  house  of  stone  or  clay,  although  it  may  be  just  one 
of  canes,  roofed  with  the  same  and  thatched  with  straw. 
As  to  their  personal  appearance,  the  man's  head  is 
generally  shaved,  except  the  crown,  where  a  short  tuft 
of  raven-black  hair  is  allowed  to  grow.  Their  women 
are  not  veiled  or  hidden.  Their  dress  is  very  primitive 
and  yet  not  wholly  devoid  of  attractiveness.  They 
wear  woollen  robes  summer  and  winter;  their  sheep  give 
them  their  Roman  senatorial  toga,  with  its  Capuchin- 
hood  ornament.  Linen  and  cotton  they  did  not  know, 
and  hence  did  not  use  at  all  until  recently,  and  even  now 
they  wear  but  Httle  of  it.  Although  they  live  within 
sight  of  telegraph  Hues,  they  still  dress  and  eat,  and  watch 
their  herds  just  as  did  Abraham,  or  any  other  Oriental 
patriarch.  They  do  more  and  better  —  they  raise  good 
crops  and  are  not  wanderers  upon  the  face  of  the  earth. 
The  Kabyles  are  older  than  the  Arabs;  they  go  back  to 
the  twilight  of  antiquity.  In  Northern  Africa  generally, 
and  in  Algeria  especially,  they  are  considered  as  aborig- 
inal, and  certainly  in  their  own  government  they  are 
very  independent  and  democratic.  The  tribes  hve  in 
villages,  usually  quite  small,  and  they  may  be  counted 
by  the  hundreds  from  any  elevated  point.  The  villages 
are  grouped  into  communes,  decheras;  each  dechera  has 
as  many  karouhas  as  there  are  distinct  families.  The 
members  of  the  karouhas  elect  local  councillors  or  dahman, 
each  of  whom  represents  the  interests  of  his  commune 
in  the  djemma,  the  local  legislature  or  county  council, 
which  is  presided  over  by  an  Amin,  who  is  a  village 
headman  and  possesses  judicial  as  well  as  military  author- 
ity.   The  collective  Amins  choose  one  of  their  number 


PEOPLES  OF  NORTHERN  AFRICA   53 

to  be  the  Amin  of  Amins,  and  he  becomes  the  political 
chief,  or  president,  of  all  the  tribes,  but  in  Algeria  always 
under  French  supervision;  although  the  latter  have 
learnt  the  wisdom  of  as  Uttle  interference  as  possible. 

A  Kabyle  looks  upon  his  little  plot  of  ground  as  his 
castle  in  very  truth,  and  should  anyone  venture  to  step 
a  foot  on  his  land,  after  having  been  formally  forbidden 
to  do  so,  the  owner  would  be  very  likely  to  kill  the 
intruder  without  compunction,  and  he  would  be  held 
blameless.  Cox  concludes  his  remarks  about  these  in- 
teresting people  thus:  *'If  I  were  to  speculate  about  the 
Kabyles,  and  with  the  valuable  work  of  John  C.  Baldwin 
before  me,  I  should  say,  first,  the  races  are  seldom  foimd 
pure;  secondly,  that  Africa,  even  in  its  interior,  is  not 
inhabited  by  savage  blacks,  Uke  the  Guinea  negroes; 
thirdly,  an  opinion  based  on  conversation  with  Dr.  Beke 
and  other  explorers,  that  the  African  proper,  if  not 
white,  is  a  '  red  race'  —  that  is,  brown  or  olive  coloured, 
like  the  Kabyles;  fourthly,  that  in  Northern  Africa, 
although  there  is  a  great  intermixture  of  black  and  white, 
growing  out  of  the  conquests  of  Phoenician,  Greek, 
Roman,  Goth,  Turk,  and  French,  yet  so  far  as  that 
portion  of  the  continent  is  concerned,  the  Berbers,  or 
Barbarians,  now  supposed  to  be  the  Tauarigs,  or  Touar- 
icks,  are  the  prehistoric,  primordial  stock,  from  which 
the  Kabyles  are  doubtless  an  offshoot.  The  Tauarigs 
are  of  the  Desert  and  not  the  people  to  acknowledge  the 
relationship;  they  are  proud  and  reluctant  to  recognise 
any  power  but  their  own  —  even  their  camels  are  said  to 
be  more  aristocratic  than  the  beasts  of  other  tribes. 
Whether  coeval  with  the  first  forming  of  the  Mississippi 


54  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

delta,  only  one  hundred  thousand  years  ago,  or  the 
Florida  coral  reefs,  still  thirty-five  thousand  years  older; 
whether  they  are  Cushite,  Semitic,  or  Aryan;  whether 
out  of  Arabia,  Egypt,  or  India;  whether  they  are  the 
second  birth  of  a  race,  aroused  to  self-consciousness  by 
some  new  physical  developments  —  one  thing  is  as  cer- 
tain as  any  other  nebulosities  of  history;  viz.,  that  the 
Kabyle  is  very  Uke  this  same  prehistoric  Berber.  The 
Kabyle  is  not  black;  neither  is  the  Berber.  Their  colour 
comes  alone  from  solar  exposure,  it  is  not  organic;  so  of 
the  Berber.  He  who  describes  the  Berber  unconsciously 
describes  the  Kabyle.  .  .  .  There  is  something  very 
beautiful  in  the  grand  plan  of  the  Mitidji.  Not  only  its 
fields  of  waving  oats,  barley,  and  wheat,  just  ripening; 
not  only  its  flax  fields,  in  bluish  bloom;  not  alone  its 
flowers  and  shrubs,  two  out  of  every  three  of  which  we 
have  seen  in  Corsica  or  in  the  Riviera;  not  alone  its 
yellow  genista,  a  flower  of  Gascony,  and  from  which  the 
Plantagenets  took  their  name  —  for  they  are  Gascons, 
like  the  flowers;  not  alone  the  ferula,  the  camels,  the 
donkeys,  all  things  please."  The  somewhat  lengthy 
account  of  the  Kabyles  —  or  Kabail,  as  many  ethnol- 
ogists and  travellers  contend  the  name  should  be 
written  —  has  been  given  because  they  are  the  most 
interesting  of  all  the  Northern  Africa  peoples. 

The  Arabs  of  this  section  are,  of  course,  the  descend- 
ants of  the  two  great  incursions  by  those  people  from 
their  homeland  in  Arabia;  the  first  —  which  has  to  do 
more  particularly  with  Abyssinia  and  therefore  comes  in 
Chapter  X,  "Eastern  Africa," — in  the  eighth  century, 
and  the  second,  which  began  in  the  eleventh.     Of  the 


PEOPLES  OF  NORTHERN  AFRICA   55 

first  it  is  unnecessary  to  speak  here,  for  what  is  said  of 
the  Arabs  now  to  be  found  applies  with  equal  propriety 
to  all.  There  are  plenty  of  these  people  to  be  seen  in 
all  parts  of  this  Northern  Africa,  and  they  are  especially 
numerous  in  Morocco  and  the  southern  part  of  Algeria; 
in  both  these  States  it  is  impossible  to  draw  a  line  which 
marks  ofif,  even  approximately,  the  Arabs  of  the  recog- 
nised government  districts  and  those  in  the  free  desert. 
Some  of  the  Arabs  are  cultivators  of  the  soil  and  hve 
permanently  in  villages  in  the  neighbourhood  of  towns; 
but  by  far  the  great  majority  of  them,  true  to  those 
habits  which  are  an  inheritance  from  ancestors  in  the 
remote  past,  have  no  fixed  habitations  and  dwell  in  tents, 
which  they  move  about  from  place  to  place  as  the  fancy 
strikes  them  or  as  the  exigencies  of  their  pastoral  fife 
demand.  The  preponderating  influence  which  the  Arabs 
exert  is  indicated  by  the  statement  of  Dr.  Latham* 
that  all  which  is  not  Arabic  in  Morocco,  Algeria, 
Tunis,  Tripoli,  and  Fezzan  is  Berber,  and  that,  as  a 
general  rule,  the  Arabic  is  the  language  for  the  whole 
of  the  seacoast  from  the  Nile  Delta  to  the  Straits  of 
Gibraltar,  and  from  the  Mediterranean  down  the  Atlantic 
coast  of  Africa  to  the  mouth  of  the  Senegal.  There  is 
really  but  little  that  is  attractive  about  the  migratory, 
predatory,  troublesome  Arabs,  and  the  fact  is  empha- 
sised by  the  history  of  Africa  for  many  generations. 
"The  origin  of  the  Arab  race,  like  that  of  most  others, 

*  Probably  Robert  Gordon  Latham,  whose  contention  for  the 
European  origin  of  the  Aryans  —  rather  favourably  alluded  to  by 
Canon  Isaac  Taylor  in  his  "Origin  of  the  Aryans," — must  be  ad- 
mitted to  reflect  somewhat  upon  his  reliability. 


56  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

can  be  only  a  matter  of  conjecture;  no  credit  can  be 
attached  to  the  assertion,  evidently  unbased  on  historical 
facts,  of  those  authors  who,  building  on  the  narrow  foun- 
dation of  Hebrew  records,  have  included  the  entire 
nation  under  the  titles  of  Ishmael  and  Joktan;  and 
Mahometan  testimony  on  these  matters  can  have  no 
more  weight  than  the  Jewish,  from  which  it  is  evidently 
derived."  *  The  race  must  be  divided  into  two  branches 
—  the  "Arab,"  or  pure,  and  the  "Mustareb,"  or  supple- 
mental division ;  and  since  the  Arabs  of  Northern  Africa 
are  essentially  Bedouins,  nomads,  "dwellers  in  the  open 
land,"  it  is  probably  safe  to  say  that  most  of  them  belong 
to  the  Mustareb  division. 

The  Moors  are  among  the  most  numerous  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  Kingdom  of  Morocco;  but  they  are,  also, 
spread  all  along  the  southern  Mediterranean  littoral. 
Their  evolution  is  most  unsatisfactorily  given.  The 
most  that  can  be  said  of  them  is  that  they  are  a  mixed 
race,  "grafted  upon  the  ancient  Mauretanian  stock  — 
whence  their  name."  After  the  Arabs  had  conquered 
Northern  Africa,  including  Egypt,  in  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury, the  Moors  became  mixed  with  them;  and  when 
they  in  turn  invaded  Spain,  they  intermarried  with  the 
Spaniards,  still  further  compHcating  the  blood.  The 
greater  part  of  the  Moors  were  driven  out  of  Spain  in 
the  early  years  of  the  sixteenth  century  and  returned 
to  Mauretania,  whence  they  have  spread  eastward 
throughout  the  whole  of  Northern  Africa  and  southward 
to  a  considerable  distance.  By  some  writers  it  is  said 
that  the  "Arabs  of  the  towns  are  usually  known  as  the 
*  Enc.  Brit.,  article  Arabia. 


PEOPLES  OF  NORTHERN  AFRICA   57 

Arabs;  and  among  them  are  the  Spanish  Moors,  de- 
scendants of  the  Andalusian  refugees  " ;  but  this  is  rather 
loose  ethnology.  It  is  certain  that  the  town-dwelling 
Moors  form  a  most  exclusive  and  aristocratic  class,  who 
have  no  social  intercourse  with  the  true  Arabs  and 
very  little  to  do  with  them  in  any  way.  The  Moors  are 
"a  handsome  race,  having  much  more  resemblance  to 
Europeans  and  western  Asiatics  than  to  Arabs  or  Ber- 
bers," although  their  language  is  Arabic;  that  is,  the 
Mogrepin  dialect,  which  differs  considerably  from  the 
Arabic  in  Arabia  and  even  from  that  which  is  spoken 
in  Egypt.  Mograb  is  that  region  in  Northern  Africa 
which  is  nearly  equivalent  to  the  coast  regions  of  Morocco 
and  Algeria.  "My  proper  name  is  known  only  to  my 
brethren.  The  men  beyond  our  tents  call  me  Hayrad- 
din  Mangrabin;  that  is,  Hayraddin  the  African  Moor."* 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  Moors  are  an 
intellectual  people,  having  some  attainments  in  educa- 
tion; with  their  known  antecedents  they  could  hardly 
be  otherwise :  but  they  have  not  a  very  attractive  repu- 
tation, being  "cruel,  revengeful,  and  blood-thirsty, 
exhibiting  but  few  traces  of  that  nobility  of  mind  and 
delicacy  of  feeling  and  taste  which  graced  their  ancestors 
in  Spain.  The  history  of  the  throne  of  Morocco,  of  the 
dynastic  revolutions  at  Algiers,  Tunis,  and  Tripoli,  is 
written  in  blood;  and  among  the  pirates  who  infested 
the  Mediterranean  they  were  the  worst." 

The  Jews  in  this  region  were  estimated,  some  years 
ago,  to  be  between  sixty  and  seventy  thousand  in  num- 
ber, and  it   is  not   likely   that   they  have  materially 

*  Scott,  "Quentin  Durward,"  Chapter  XVI. 


58  AFRICATO-DAY 

decreased.  They  are  said  to  be  looked  upon  by  their 
orthodox  co-religionists  as  almost  apostate,  so  greatly 
have  they  diverged  in  ritualistic  observance.  As  is  the 
almost  universal  rule  with  Jews,  these  people  in  Northern 
Africa  are  to  be  found  in  the  towns  only,  where  they 
are  money  lenders  and  merchants.  They  use  a  corrupt 
form  of  Spanish  for  their  speech  and  cannot  be  said 
to  offer  much  that  is  attractive  or  even  interesting  to 
the  visitor;  although  the  tourist  who  seeks  to  increase 
his  collection  of  curios  from  a  region  that  is  rich  in 
possibihties  will,  of  course,  find  himself  continually  deal- 
ing with  these  Jews,  and  he  is  quite  as  certain  to  suffer 
in  consequence. 

The  Turks,  although  the  dominant  race  in  Northern 
Africa  for  a  long  time,  were  never  very  numerous,  and 
since  the  French  occupation  of  Algeria  and  Tunis  and 
preponderating  influence  in  Morocco  they  have  nearly 
disappeared.  But  wherever  the  Turk  has  been  in  Africa, 
as  everywhere  else  for  that  matter,  he  has  given  way  to 
his  natural  animal  passion  and  taken  the  native  women 
into  his  harem  in  any  way  that  suited  his  pleasure  — 
by  nominal  marriage,  by  purchase,  or  by  capture.  It  is 
remarkable,  however,  that  this  intercourse  has  been 
most  fruitful,  and  this  custom  has,  in  North  Africa, 
resulted  in  the  creation  of  a  numerous  mixed  race,  called 
Kolougis:  for  the  Turkish  fathers,  on  leaving  for  the 
homeland,  seldom  took  any  of  these  mixed  offspring 
with  them — never  any  of  the  girls;  so  that  now  a  consid- 
erable proportion  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  towns  are 
Kolougis.  Of  them  the  travellers  rarely  have  much 
to  say  that  is  good. 


PEOPLES  OF  NORTHERN  AFRICA   59 

The  Negroes  who  are  found  in  this  region  were,  it  need 
hardly  be  said,  all  slaves  brought  by  caravans  across  the 
desert  and  who  had  been  captured  in  the  interior. 
Slavery  is  no  longer  tolerated  in  any  part  of  this  domain 
where  European  authority  exists  or  influence  asserts 
itself;  but  the  negroes  are  still  quite  numerous  and  the 
traces  of  their  blood  in  the  mixed  populace,  distinct  or 
remote  as  the  case  may  be  —  for  this  progeny  is  a  great 
factor  in  the  general  population, — are  self-evident.  When 
we  know  of  the  large  number  of  negroes  in  Northern 
Africa,  mulattoes,  and  thinner  strains  of  the  blood,  and 
then  read  of  the  thousands  upon  thousands  of  these 
poor  slaves  who  were  abandoned  in  the  desert  when  the 
water  bags  in  the  caravan  ran  low  and  the  oasis  failed 
to  keep  its  promise  of  a  fresh  supply,  it  makes  the  heart 
ache.  We  shall  learn  something  of  the  horrors  of  the 
Slave  Caravans  in  the  next  chapter,  "The  Sahara,"  and 
something  of  the  general  inefficiency  of  the  negro  in 
Chapter  XIII,  "The  Blacks  of  Africa."  It  is  sufficient 
to  say  here  that  in  North  Africa  they  fill  only  the 
most  menial  of  positions,  except  when,  as  eunuchs,  they 
are  placed  in  positions  of  some  responsibihty  in  charge 
of  the  harem  of  a  Moor,  an  Arab,  or  a  Turk.  It  is  sel- 
dom that  they  are  found  to  be  efficient  domestic  servants 
in  the  household  of  the  Europeans.  The  allusion  just 
made  to  the  harem  recalls  the  fact  that  the  women  who 
have  been  born  and  brought  up  in  the  homes  of  Moslems, 
or  those  who  have  been  forced  to  enter  the  harem  by 
reason  of  purchase  or  capture,  have  been  and  still  are 
treated  as  if  they  were  scarcely  human  beings.  They 
are  taught  that  they  exist  merely  to  gratify  the  animal 


6o  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

passions  of  their  lord,  and  since  this  sort  of  training 
cannot  possibly  induce  anything  like  sincere  affection 
and  respect,  these  women  are  rarely  influenced  in  their 
deportment  by  any  sense  of  propriety  or  chastity.  It  is 
strange,  yet  the  fact  is  vouched  for  by  many  observers, 
that  nearly  all  of  these  Moslem  women  become  possessed 
with  violently  amorous  passion  for  Christians,  if  chance 
in  any  way  gives  them  the  opportunity  of  seeing  one 
who  is  at  all  attractive,  and  then  the  infatuation  which 
succeeds  leads  them  to  go  to  the  greatest  extremes,  if 
only  they  can  gratify  their  lechery. 

An  exception  must  be  made  to  the  somewhat  condem- 
natory remarks  which  have  just  been  made  upon  the 
Negroes  of  Northern  Africa  in  the  case  of  the  Mozabites, 
who  are  an  African  race  and  akin  to  the  Negroes,  if  they 
are  not  actually  Negroes  themselves.  They  are  found  in 
most  of  the  coast  towns,  from  Tripoli  west,  and  are  de- 
scribed as  an  honest,  industrious,  and  peaceable  people; 
the  description  differentiates  them  widely  from  the 
typical  Negro  of  the  same  region. 
.  Of  the  continental  European  resident  or  temporary 
sojourner  in  Northern  Africa  it  is  not  necessary  to  say 
anything,  since  they  display  no  traits  which  in  any 
way  distinguish  them  from  their  fellows  at  home.  But 
something  may  appositely  be  said  about  the  Maltese, 
who  probably  are  the  most  numerous  of  those  whom 
we  may  call  Europeans  along  the  southern  shore  of  the 
Mediterranean.  They  are  described  as  being  a  strong, 
well-formed  race,  dark,  handsome,  and  lithe;  the  women 
have  black  eyes  and  fine  hair,  are  coquettish  but  chaste, 
they  carry  themselves  gracefully  and  are  attractive  in 


PEOPLES  OF  NORTHERN  AFRICA   6l 

every  way,  being  cheerful,  good,  honest,  and  industrious. 
All  these  Maltese  are  sober  and  abstemious,  although 
they  are  quick-tempered,  and  when  their  anger  is  aroused 
they  are  a  Uttle  too  much  addicted  to  the  use  of  the 
knife.  There  is  a  large  infusion  of  Spanish,  Italian,  and 
even  French  blood,  but  among  these  African  Mal- 
tese the  Arabian  characteristics  predominate  quite  as 
markedly  as  on  the  island  of  Malta  itself.  In  their 
language  fully  seventy  per  cent,  of  the  words  are  Arabic, 
in  fact  or  as  derivatives,  and  the  rest  are  corrupted 
Italian.  As  is  said  of  the  Maltese  when  at  home,  "the 
festivals  and  ceremonials  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
are  kept  up  with  extraordinary  precision,  while  there 
are  a  few  that  are  seemingly  derived  from  the  Greek 
Church.  The  perpetual  ringing  of  monotonous  church 
bells  and  the  peculiar  method  of  striking  time  —  feat- 
ures which  are  very  noticeable  in  the  quarters  where 
these  Maltese  congregate  —  are  relics  of  Southern  Ital- 
ian customs." 

There  is  an  amusing  myth  told  of  the  people  of  Tripoli 
city,  who  were  said  to  entrust  the  guarding  of  their  city 
in  the  night  time  entirely  to  mastiffs,  dispensing  alto- 
gether with  the  services  of  warders  or  patrols.  The  dogs 
were  shut  up  during  the  day  in  one  of  the  bastions  of 
the  ramparts.  At  night  these  animals  discharged  very 
faithfully  the  duties  entrusted  to  them;  they  patrolled 
the  streets,  and  if  they  happened  to  meet  any  person 
they  were  sure  to  tear  him  to  pieces.  The  moment  the 
day  broke  they  went  of  themselves  back  to  the  door  of 
their  prisons;  but  at  all  times  they  would  bark  furiously 
the  moment  they  heard  anyone  come  near  their  habi- 


62  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

tation,  and  their  roaring  was  to  be  heard  in  all  quarters 
of  the  city. 

We  should  hardly,  in  justice  to  the  native  population  of 
Northern  Africa,  and  especially  of  the  Colony  of  Algiers, 
close  this  chapter  without  some  reference  to  the  unfair 
treatment  to  which  the  aboriginal  peoples  were  subjected 
by  their  modern  European  conquerors.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  go  back  into  the  ancient  history  of  the  land  and 
tell  of  the  cruel  deeds  of  Greeks,  Romans,  and  Goths  — 
and  there  are  some  very  black  pages  connected  with 
Lybia,  Numidia,  Mauretania;  but  in  the  last  century 
deeds  were  wrought  of  the  grossest  cruelty  and  treachery. 
One  of  the  French  generals,  in  1831,  killed  a  whole  Arab 
tribe,  including  the  feeble  old  men,  the  defenceless 
women,  and  the  helpless  children,  because  of  a  robbery 
that  had  been  committed  by  some  male  members  of  the 
tribe.  The  same  officer  also  treacherously  caused  two 
Arab  chiefs  to  be  murdered,  after  those  men  had  given 
themselves  up  on  the  general's  written  assurance  of 
their  safety.  Naturally  such  acts,  and  hundreds  more 
Hke  them,  exasperated  the  natives,  and  their  attempts 
at  vengeance  and  reprisal  greatly  added  to  the  burdens 
of  the  French.  But  can  we  truthfully  say  they  were 
absolutely  without  justification? 

There  has  been,  within  the  last  fifty  years,  a  marked 
improvement  in  the  condition  of  the  native  population 
in  French  African  territories.  An  act  of  July  19,  1865, 
gave  to  natives,  both  Mahometan  and  Jew,  rank  and 
prerogative  equal  with  French  citizens,  on  placing  them- 
selves completely  and  absolutely  under  the  civil  and 
political  laws  of  France;  and  thus  they  were  made  admis- 


PEOPLES  OF  NORTHERN  AFRICA   63 

sible  to  all  the  grades  of  the  colonial  army  and  navy 
and  to  many  posts  in  the  Civil  Service.  The  colony  is 
now  represented  in  the  National  Assembly  by  delegates; 
and  after  many  vicissitudes,  the  story  of  which  belongs 
in  the  domain  of  precise  history,  the  Colony  of  Algiers 
and  the  Protectorate  of  Tunis  may  be  said  to  be 
now  in  a  peaceable  and  flourishing  condition.  It  will 
be  known  to  all  how  the  Uberality  of  the  act  of  1865 
has  been  somewhat  curtailed  by  subsequent  legislation; 
although  this  has  not  been  directed  specifically  against 
Algeria  and  Tunis. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  SAHARA:    THE  DESERT,  THE  OASES, 
THE  INHABITANTS,   THE  LIFE 

ONE  of  the  earliest  accounts  which  we  have  of  the 
Sahara  is  that  given  by  Herodotus,  telling  of 
certain  Nasamonian  youths,  impressed  by  the  marvel- 
lous stories  from  the  desert  that  had  reached  their  ears, 
who  set  out  from  their  home,  somewhere  in  the  eastern 
central  part  of  the  continent,  it  is  to  be  presumed,  and 
probably  to  be  located  southeast  of  the  desert  itself, 
to  explore  the  Libyan  Desert.  They  were  gone  a  long 
time  and  on  their  return  had,  of  course,  many  wonderful 
tales  to  tell  of  their  adventures.  They  found,  far  off  in 
the  wilds,  a  race  of  diminutive  men,  of  less  than  middle 
stature,  who  carried  them  off  as  prisoners  to  their  city, 
standing  on  the  bank  of  a  river  flowing  from  west  to 
east,  in  which  river  were  many  crocodiles.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  identify  this  river,  but  the  association  of  little 
men,  river  flowing  eastward,  and  crocodiles  rather  sug- 
gest the  Niger  country  than  the  Sahara  or  Libyan  desert. 
The  intruders  seem  to  have  been  very  gently  treated 
by  the  dwarfs,  and  eventually  the  Nasamonians  returned 
safely  to  their  home,  emphasised  the  wonderful  stories 
which  had  been  heard  before,  and  declared  that  the 
men  whom  they  had  met  were  necromancers. 
The  general  impression  of  the  physical  appearance  of 

64 


THE    SAHARA  65 

the  desert,  the  one  which  prevails  very  widely,  that  it 
is  a  vast  level  or  undulating  expanse  of  sand,  is  by  no 
means  correct.  There  are  rocky  hills  and  mountains 
of  no  mean  altitude;  as,  for  example,  the  central  range, 
about  midway  between  the  Nile  and  the  Atlantic  and 
running  north  and  south,  the  Ahaggar  (Hoggar  or  Tasih 
Ahaggar),  a  great  mountain  plateau,  and  in  the  east  the 
Tarso  mountains;  while  between  them  are  the  moun- 
tains of  Air,  of  volcanic  origin.  "Nearly  all  the  rest  of 
the  Sahara  consists  in  the  main  of  undulating  surfaces 
of  rock  (distinguished  as  hammada),  vast  tracts  of  water- 
worn  pebbles  (serir),  and  regions  of  sandy  dunes  (vari- 
ously called  maghter,  erg  or  areg,  igidi,  and  in  the  east 
rhart)  which,  according  to  M.  Pomel,  occupy  about  one- 
ninth  or  one-tenth  of  the  total  area."  Scattered  all  over 
the  desert  are  the  ravines  or  narrow  valleys  (wadi), 
some  of  them  more  or  less  fertile;  and  there  are,  besides, 
the  great  number  of  oases.  On  the  caravan  road  from 
TripoU  to  Lake  Chad  there  are  many  of  these  hamada, 
and  Hamada  el  Homra,  "the  red  wilderness,"  stands 
first  of  all.  A  great  range  bars  the  road  to  the  south 
between  the  coast  of  the  Mediterranean  and  Fezzan;  it 
rises  in  one  great  sohd  plateau  of  chalk,  eighteen  hun- 
dred feet  in  height,  and  it  is  about  one  hundred  and 
forty  miles  broad  where  the  road  crosses  it.  Below  it 
begins  the  desert  proper,  naked  and  hopeless. 

The  Sahara  has  been  visited  by  innumerable  travellers 
of  all  classes,  from  the  idlest  tourist,  merely  on  pleasure 
bent,  to  the  most  precise  scientist.  Representatives  of 
all  these  have  tried  to  give  us  their  descriptions  of  the 
desert  and  to  analyse  their  own  impressions,  and  yet  it 


66  AFRICATO-DAY 

is  safe  to  say  that  no  one  of  them  has  been  able  to  give 
a  pen  and  ink  picture  which  enables  those  who  have  not 
seen  for  themselves  to  get  even  a  faint  idea  of  just  what 
the  desert  is.  It  is  not  intended  to  attempt  to  do  here 
that  which  so  many,  far  more  competent,  have  failed  in 
doing.  For  every  visitor  finds  the  desert  to  be  totally 
different  in  its  aspect  and  in  its  influence  from  his 
preconceived  idea.  The  impressive  desolation,  the  enor- 
mous mass  of  rolling  sand,  the  atmosphere,  the  irresist- 
ible fascination  of  the  place,  all  bid  defiance  to  the  pen, 
while  the  attempts  to  depict  the  desert  with  the  brush 
have  not  yet  been  satisfactory  and  are  not  likely  to  be 
so.  To  the  uninitiated,  pictures  are  almost  sure  to  suggest 
exaggeration  of  colour  effects,  both  in  land  and  in  sky, 
while  the  experienced  eye  too  often  fails  to  be  satisfied 
with  even  this  seeming  exaggeration.  The  statement  of 
this  writer,  that  he  has  seen  sunsets  in  the  desert  which, 
if  it  were  possible  faithfully  to  reproduce  them  on  canvas, 
would  be  pronounced,  by  those  who  have  not  seen  the 
same  sort  of  colour  display,  the  fantasy  of  an  overwrought 
imagination,  will  be  endorsed  by  those  who  have  seen 
just  such  gorgeous  sunsets.  One  feature,  however,  may 
safely  be  named,  since  this  is  not  a  description — the  awe- 
inspiring  silence  when  the  desert  is  in  its  normal  condi- 
tion. This  seems  to  grip  the  intruder's  very  soul,  while 
the  sunrise  and  sunset  and  the  moonlight  effects  almost 
admit  of  description  because  of  their  very  gorgeousness 
and  the  curious  refraction  that  makes  the  distant  hills 
appear  to  be  floating  in  midair.  Everyone  who  has  seen 
the  desert  must  agree  with  the  writer  who  said:  "The 
desert  has  left  an  impression  on  my  soul  which  nothing 


THE    SAHARA  67 

will  ever  efface.  I  had  entered  it  frivolously,  like  a  fool 
who  rushes  in  where  angels  and,  I  beUeve,  even  devils 
fear  to  tread.  I  left  it  as  one  stunned,  crushed  by  the 
deadly  majesty  I  had  seen  too  closely.  I  imagine  that 
such  must  be  the  feelings  of  the  shipwrecked  mariner 
whom  the  stormy  seas  have  torn  from  his  wreck  and 
thrown,  half  drowned,  upon  the  shore."  * 

Another  writer  has  tried  to  describe  his  sensations, 
and  he  has  been  almost  successful,  as  having  a  slight 
feeling  that  he  is  leaving  all  things  behind:  "It  seemed 
as  if  God  were  putting  forth  His  hand  to  withdraw 
gradually  all  things  of  His  creation,  all  the  furniture 
He  had  put  into  the  great  Palace  of  the  World;  as 
if  He  meant  to  leave  it  empty  and  utterly  naked.  First 
He  took  the  rich  and  shaggy  grass,  and  all  the  little 
flowers  that  bloomed  modestly  in  it.  Then  He  drew 
away  the  orange  groves,  the  oleander  and  the  apricot 
trees,  the  faithful  eucalyptus  with  its  pale  stem  and 
tressy  foliage,  the  sweet  waters  that  fertilised  the  soil, 
making  it  soft  and  brown  where  the  plough  seamed  it 
into  furrows,  the  tufted  plants  and  giant  reeds  that 
crowd  where  water  is.  And  still,  as  the  train  ran  on, 
His  gifts  grew  fewer.  At  last  even  the  palms  were  gone, 
and  the  Barbary  fig  displayed  no  longer  among  the 
cnunbling  boulders  its  tortured  strength  and  the  pale 
and  fantastic  evolutions  of  its  unnatural  foliage.  Stones 
lay  everywhere  upon  the  pale  and  grey-brown  earth. 
Crystals  glittered  in  the  sun  like  shallow  jewels,  and 
far  away,  under  clouds  that  were  dark  and  feathery, 
appeared  hard  and  relentless  mountains,  which  looked 
*  "  Across  the  Sahara  from  Tripoli  to  Bomu,"  Hanns  Vischer. 


68  AFRICATO-DAY 

as  if  they  were  made  of  iron  and  carved  into  horrible 
and  jagged  shapes.  Where  they  fell  into  ravines,  they 
became  black.  Their  swelling  bosses  and  flanks,  sharp 
sometimes  as  the  springing  of  animals,  were  steel- 
coloured.  .  .  .  Domini  scarcely  looked  at  them.  Till  now 
she  had  always  thought  she  loved  mountains.  The  desert 
suddenly  made  them  insignificant,  almost  mean  to  her. 
She  turned  her  eyes  towards  the  flat  spaces.  It  was  in 
them  that  mystery  lay  —  mystery,  power,  and  all  deep 
and  significant  things.  ...  It  was  noon  in  the  desert. 
The  voice  of  the  Mueddin  died  away  on  the  minaret, 
and  the  golden  silence  that  comes  out  of  the  heart  of 
the  sun  sank  down  once  more  softly  over  everything. 
Nature  seemed  unnaturally  still  in  the  heat.  The  slight 
winds  were  not  at  play,  and  the  palms  of  Beni-Mora 
stood  motionless  as  palm  trees  in  a  dream.  The  day 
was  like  a  dream,  intense  and  passionate,  yet  touched 
with  something  unearthly,  something  almost  spiritual. 
In  the  cloudless  blue  of  the  sky  there  seemed  a  magic 
depth,  regions  of  colour  infinitely  prolonged.  In  the 
vision  of  the  distances,  where  desert  blent  with  sky, 
earth  surely  curving  up  to  meet  the  downward 
curving  heaven,  the  dimness  was  like  a  voice  whispering 
strange  petitions.  The  ranges  of  mountains  slept  in 
the  burning  sand,  and  the  light  slept  in  their  clefts  like 
the  languid  in  cool  places.  For  there  was  a  glorious 
languor  even  in  the  light,  as  if  the  sun  were  faintly 
oppressed  by  the  marvel  of  his  power.  The  clear- 
ness of  the  atmosphere  in  the  remote  desert  was  not 
obscured,  but  was  impregnated  with  the  mystery  that  is 
the  wonderous  child  of  shadows.    The  far-off  gold  that 


THESAHARA  69 

kept  it  seemed  to  contain  a  secret  darkness.  In  the  oasis 
of  Beni-Mora  men,  who  had  slowly  roused  themselves 
to  pray,  sank  down  to  sleep  again  in  the  warm  twilight 
of  shrouded  gardens  or  the  warm  night  of  windowless 
rooms. 

The  gazelle  dies  in  the  water, 

The  fish  dies  in  the  air, 

And  I  die  in  the  dunes  of  the  desert  sand 

For  my  love  that  is  deep  and  sad. 
No  one  but  God  and  I 
Knows  what  is  in  my  heart."  * 

But  the  desert  in  its  anger,  is  described  in  quite  a 
different  strain:  "As  the  sea  in  a  great  storm  rages 
against  the  land,  ferocious  that  land  should  be,  so  the 
desert  now  raged  against  the  oasis  that  ventured  to 
exist  in  its  bosom.  Every  pahn  tree  was  the  victim  of 
its  wrath,  every  running  rill,  every  habitation  of  man. 
Along  the  tunnels  of  mimosa  it  went  hke  a  foaming 
tide  through  a  cavern,  roaring  towards  the  mountains. 
It  returned  and  swept  about  the  narrow  streets,  eddy- 
ing at  the  comers,  beating  upon  the  palm-wood  doors, 
behind  which  the  painted  dancing-girls  were  cowering, 
cold  under  their  pigments  and  their  heavy  jewels,  their 
red  hands  trembling  and  clasping  one  another,  clamour- 
ing about  the  minarets  of  the  mosques  on  which  the 
frightened  doves  were  sheltering,  shaking  the  fences 
that  shut  in  the  gazelles  in  their  pleasaunce."  f 

A  different  attempt  at  describing  the  desert,  with  a 
very  fetching  slap  at  the  ways  of  "personally  conducted 
tourists,"  is  adapted  from  another  book,  but  not  as  a 
♦  "  The  Garden  of  Allah,"  Robert  Hichens.  f  Ilnd. 


70  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

precise  quotation.  We  went  through  the  rich  fields  of 
Abydos  to  visit  the  sanctuaries  of  Osiris,  beyond  green 
plains,  on  the  edge  of  the  Libyan  desert.  Suddenly, 
after  passing  between  the  little  houses  and  through  the 
trees  of  a  village,  quite  a  different  world  was  reached  — 
the  familiar  world  of  glare  and  death  which  presses  so 
closely  upon  inhabited  Egypt — the  desert.  The  desert 
of  Libya  begins  at  once,  without  transition,  absolute 
and  terrible,  as  soon  as  one  leaves  the  thick  velvet  of 
the  last  field,  the  cool  shade  of  the  last  acacia.  Its 
sands  seem  to  slope  towards  one,  in  a  prodigious  incline, 
from  the  strange  mountains  that  were  to  be  seen  from 
the  happy  plain,  and  which  now  disappear,  enthroned 
beyond,  like  the  monarchs  of  all  this  nothingness.  The 
town  of  Abydos  was  here,  yet  it  has  vanished;  but  the 
necropolis,  more  venerated  than  that  of  Memphis  even, 
and  its  thrice-holy  temple  are  still  west,  buried  under 
the  destructive  and  yet  preserving  sands.  The  desert! 
As  soon  as  one  puts  foot  upon  its  shifting  soil,  which 
smothers  the  sound  of  one's  steps,  the  atmosphere  too 
seems  suddenly  to  change;  it  burns  with  a  strange  new 
heat,  as  if  great  fires  had  been  lighted  in  the  neighbour- 
hood. The  colours  of  the  ground  are  brown,  red,  yellow. 
The  horizon  trembles  in  the  mirage.  The  Necropolis 
of  Abydos  once,  and  yet  for  hundreds  of  years,  exercised 
extraordinary  fascination  over  the  Egyptians;  it  was 
the  precursor  of  later  comers,  possibly  of  those  of  the 
present  dwellers  in  the  Nile  Valley.  Osiris  was  the  head 
of  the  pantheon;  he  was  the  lord  of  the  other  world, 
and  he  reposed  in  the  depths  of  one  of  the  temples  that 
are  to-day  buried  in  the  sands  that  have  silently,  slowly, 


THESAHARA  7I 

relentlessly  swept  in  from  the  desert.  Good  influences 
emanate  from  all  parts  of  this  sacred  domain,  but  there 
are  certain  places  which  are  particularly  capable  of 
conferring  good  luck  to  all  entrusted  to  them ;  hence  all 
wished  to  lie  near  their  gods.  So  great  was  the  crowd 
of  bodies  brought  for  sepulture  here  that  many  of  the 
mummies  had  to  be  stood  up  in  rows  wherever  space 
could  be  found,  and  there  were  funeral  processions  all 
the  time  along  the  road  from  the  Nile  to  Abydos.  Of 
the  temples,  the  first  was  that  built  by  King  Seti  in 
honour  of  the  Prince  of  the  Other  World,  Osiris;  and 
in  the  spacious  halls  of  this  temple,  which  have  been 
cleared  of  the  sand  that  so  long  buried  them,  to-day 
one  of  the  most  popular  entertainments  ofi"ered  to 
Cook's  tourists,  who  go  to  see  the  temple  and  the  awe- 
inspiring  desert,  is  a  luncheon  spread  on  tables  set  up 
in  what  should  be  respected,  even  by  Christian  visitors, 
as  a  sacred  spot,  reclaimed  at  great  expense  and  with 
supreme  labour  from  the  silence  of  the  desert.  And 
until  the  desecration  was  stopped  by  official  order  at 
the  urgent  request  of  Europeans,  the  limestone  bas- 
reliefs  were  crushed  to  make  cement  for  building 
purposes  in  a  mill  hard-by,  owned  by  other  foreign 
vandals.  These  bas-rehefs  were  in  every  way  beyond 
price.  Think  of  this  outrage!  The  walls,  as  restored, 
display  fresh  colouring  and  an  artless  kind  of  frescoing 
that  are  bright  after  thirty-five  hundred  years.  The 
old  Egyptians  could  not  think  of  interring  their  dead 
in  such  gloomy  places  as  our  modern  cemeteries  usually 
are.* 

•  See  "  La  Mort  de  Philae,"  Pierre  Loti. 


72  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Oases  are  defined  as  various  fertile  tracts  occurring 
throughout  the  great  belt  of  deserts  extending  from  the 
west  coast  of  Africa,  across  practically  the  whole  of  that 
continent,  across  Arabia,  and  on  to  Central  Asia.  These 
garden-like  spots,  the  oases,  are  watered  by  natural 
springs,  ordinary  or  artesian  wells,  and  are  clothed  with 
vegetation.  The  best  known  are  those  which  occur 
in  the  central  and  eastern  portions  of  the  Great  Sahara 
and  in  the  Libyan  deserts.  It  is  said  that  what  seems 
to  be  almost  a  chain  of  oases  in  the  eastern  part  of  the 
latter  are  the  present  survivals  of  a  broad  belt  of  arable 
land  which  extended  from  the  west  bank  of  the  Nile 
far  out  beyond  these  comparatively  small  tracts  of  fertile 
land,  and  it  is  declared  that  had  reasonable  intelligence 
been  displayed  and  ordinary  care  been  taken,  the  en- 
croachment of  the  sand  upon  much  of  this  great  tract 
might  have  been  stopped;  but  it  was  manifestly  much 
easier  for  the  farmers,  thousands  of  years  ago,  to  move 
away  from  the  oncoming  desert  than  to  struggle  against 
the  overwhelming  sand.  As  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston  inti- 
mates in  his  Foreword  to  Mr.  Vischer's  book:*  "What 
the  Young  Turks  had  already  achieved  in  the,  until  then, 
neglected  Tripolitaine,  even  before  the  revolution  of 
1908  placed  them  in  power,  is  a  very  hopeful  promise 
for  the  future  condition  of  Turkish  North  Africa  and 
should  be  a  distinct  help  to  the  new  Turkish  cause. 
While  Mr.  Vischer's  accounts  of  how  French  soldiers 
have  fought  recalcitrant  Nature  and  negligent  man,  and 
are  already  beginning  to  restore  a  most  happy  form 
of  civilisation  to  districts  that  once  enjoyed  a  radiant 
*OpuscU.  ... 


THE    SAHARA  73 

prosperity  (until  the  desert,  and  still  more  the  wanton 
Tuareks,  got  the  upper  hand),  will  strengthen  the  bonds 
of  friendship  between  France  and  those  other  sister 
nations  of  hers  in  Europe  who  are  trying,  with  occasional 
mistakes,  it  must  be  admitted  but,  on  the  whole,  with 
happy  results,  not  only  to  make  Africa  as  good  as  she 
has  ever  been  at  her  best,  but  far  better  as  the  home  of 
man  and,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  if  this  is  not  too  presump- 
tuous, the  home  for  a  long  time  to  come  of  some  of 
the  most  wonderful  beast  forms  that  the  earth  has 
ever  known." 

In  the  North  African  deserts  these  oases  are  generally 
found  in  deep  depressions  or  valleys;  the  constantly 
recurring  "wadi"  of  our  maps  often  points  to  the  place 
where  these  fertile  places  are  to  be  found,  for  it  is  here 
that  the  water  comes  to  the  surface  in  natural  springs 
or  is  procured  by  sinking  wells  which  are  rarely  of  very 
great  depth.  There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  many 
parts  of  the  desert  are  underlaid  with  watercourses,  and 
it  is  certain  "the  Arabs  have  long  been  in  the  habit  of 
tapping  these  subterranean  waters  by  sinking  wells,  a 
copious  supply  being  usually  obtained  at  depths  varying 
down  to  two  hundred  fathoms.  Indeed,  so  rapidly  does 
the  water  ascend  when  the  aqueous  strata  are  pierced 
in  certain  localities  that  the  well-sinkers  are  sometimes 
suffocated  ere  they  reach  the  surface."  The  French 
have  sunk  a  number  of  artesian  weUs  in  the  desert  south 
of  Algeria,  and  so  successfully  that  oases  have  been 
developed  to  such  a  satisfactory  degree  that  the  natives 
are  encouraged  to  turn  from  their  nomadic  life  and  be- 
come permanent,  peaceful  agriculturalists.    These  artifi- 


74  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

cial  oases,  if  we  may  be  permitted  to  coin  the  expression, 
are  not  always  permanent,  and  if  the  supply  of  water 
becomes  insufl5cient  or  gives  out  altogether,  the  relapse 
into  steriUty  is  rapid  and  destructive.  But  this  lack 
of  permanency  is  not  a  characteristic  of  some  of  the 
artificial  oases  only,  for  even  when  the  oasis  is  a  natural 
one,  if  it  is  small  great  care  and  constant  attention  are 
necessary  to  stop  the  encroachment  of  the  sand,  else 
the  tract  speedily  becomes  overwhelmed;  and  it  is  sur- 
prising how  persistent  is  the  old  habit  of  indifference 
among  the  natives — it  often  leads  them  to  neglect  their 
own  welfare  unless  carefully  supervised. 

In  the  western  part  of  the  Sahara,  Tuat,  about  one 
thousand  miles  southwest  of  Tripoli,  is  probably  the 
most  important  of  the  oases  —  as  Fezzan  and  Air  (or 
Asben)  are  in  the  eastern  Sahara.  This  last  is  some 
hundred  and  eighty  miles  in  length  from  north  to  south 
and  has  a  population  of  upwards  of  sixty  thousand  souls 
living  in  a  number  of  villages  and  towns  of  considerable 
size.  In  the  Libyan  desert  KJiargeh  (or  Kharije) ,  about 
one  hundred  and  twenty  miles  west  of  Luxor  (Thebes), 
is  sometimes  called  oasis  magnus.  There  are  a  great 
many  more  of  these  spots  throughout  the  deserts,  ranging 
in  size  from  an  acre  or  two  to  those  immense  tracts  that 
have  been  mentioned,  and  which  support  populations 
numbering  scores  of  thousands.  It  is  strange  how  many 
Europeans  have  yielded  to  the  fascination  of  life  in  these 
garden  spots;  the  soil  is  almost  always  exceptionally 
fertile,  the  variety  of  crops  surprising,  all  that  is  needed 
to  support  human  existence  is  given  by  lavish  Nature 
without  even  the  asking,  and  raiment  —  the  little  that 


THE    SAHARA  75 

is  needed  —  can  be  had  for  a  song.  With  the  possible 
exception  of  some  of  the  most  favoured  islands  of  the 
Southern  Seas,  no  spot  on  earth  can  excel  these  oases  for 
absolute  dolce farniente,  if  human  indolence  seeks  it. 

There  is  a  very  considerable  and  yearly  increasing 
trade  carried  on  in  the  desert;  although  it  must  be  said 
that  with  the  changes  which  have  come  in  the  matter 
of  commimication  business  now  finds  access  to  the 
world  at  very  different  places  from  those  which  were 
reached  by  caravans  when  all  of  them  went  to  the  north. 
Of  the  importation  of  cotton  goods,  machinery,  and  vari- 
ous articles  of  American  or  European  manufacture,  noth- 
ing is  said  here  because  such  information  is  so  entirely 
of  a  statistical  nature  and  obtainable  in  any  Trade 
Returns.  The  principal  commodities  which  were  carried 
by  the  caravans  were  dates  and  salt.  The  main  sources 
of  supply  for  the  latter  were  the  rock-salt  deposits  of 
El  Juf  and  the  oasis  of  Kawar,  the  lakes  of  Kufrah,  and 
the  brine  wells  of  Kawar.  The  dates  are  gathered  in 
every  one  of  the  innumerable  oases,  it  being  estimated 
that  there  are  fully  five  million  date-palm  trees  growing 
in  these  fertile  spots  of  the  desert  —  from  Cape  Non 
to  the  Nile  Valley.  The  most  important  of  the  former 
trade  routes  were:  Morocco  to  Cairo  by  way  of  Insala, 
Ghadames  (Tripoli),  and  through  Barca  to  Egypt.  This 
was  the  route  taken  by  practically  all  of  the  Moslem 
pilgrims  of  Western  Africa  and  the  Central  Sahara  in 
going  to  and  returning  from  Mecca.  That  was,  of 
course,  in  the  time  when  a  voyage  by  sea  was  not  safe 
for  either  Moslem  or  Christian,  but  since  the  introduc- 
tion of  steam  navigation  and  the  opening  of  the  Suez 


y6  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Canal,  these  pilgrims  take  passage  by  coastwise  steamers. 
Other  old,  important  caravan  routes  were  those  from  Kuka 
to  Murzuk  and  Tripolis;  from  the  Sudan  to  Tripolis  by 
way  of  Air  and  Ghat;  from  Timbuctoo  to  Insala  and 
on  to  Tripolis;  from  Timbuctoo  to  Algiers  and  Tunis, 
also  to  Morocco.  The  only  one  of  these  that  is  now 
of  really  much  importance  is  the  Tripolis-Kuka  one, 
going  on  to  the  Lake  Chad  district;  this  has  been  already 
mentioned  in  Chapter  III.  It  may  be  added  that  the 
southern  end  of  this  route  is  not  like  some  other  places, 
where  the  desert  ceases  and  arable  land  begins.  Often 
the  transition  is  most  abrupt,  as  has  been  noted  in  the 
case  of  the  extreme  eastern  border  of  the  Libyan  desert, 
were  the  sand  stops  sharply  defined.  In  the  Lake  Chad 
region  the  desert  gradually  gives  way  to  vegetation  and 
forests  of  acacia  trees  appear;  frequently  thorn-trees 
are  met  first,  and  excellent  pastures  for  camels,  with 
stubbly  grass  in  between  forest  and  pasture,  are  crossed, 
until  at  length  the  full  glory  of  the  tropics  is  reached. 

The  bald  statement  that  the  principal  inhabitants  of 
the  Sahara  are  Arabs,  Berbers,  and  Negroes,  is  but 
partially  satisfactory,  because  even  the  Arabs  now  dis- 
play "marked  differences  of  character,  although  always 
permanent  in  racial  type;  while  the  various  tribes  of 
Berbers  evince  their  usually  unattractive  traits  in  vary- 
ing degree,  according  as  they  are  influenced  by  situation 
and  human  surroundings.  Of  the  Negro  tribes,  it  is 
the  same  here  as  elsewhere,  that  a  very  short  interval 
of  space  marks  a  great  difference  in  characteristics. 
The  Berbers  are,  in  the  main,  to  be  found  in  the  eastern 
and  central  parts  of  the  desert;  yet  they  are  to  be  met 


THE     SAHARA  77 

with,  here  and  there,  in  the  western  central  regions, 
and  even  go  northward  into  Morocco  and  Algeria.  The 
Negro  tribes  are  spread  along  the  southern  parts  of  the 
desert,  where  it  merges  into  the  Sudan,  and  they  go 
northward  and  northeastward  from  Lake  Chad.  The 
Arabs  are  in  possession  of  all  the  country  wherever  there 
is  neither  Berber  nor  Negro. 

The  slight  difference  (although  sometimes  it  is  impor- 
tant) in  customs,  dialect,  and  other  traits,  which  mark 
ofif  the  separate  communities  of  all  these  three  races, 
offers  an  attractive  opportunity  for  research  by  the 
ethnologist  which  promises  rich  results;  and  there  is 
yet  so  much  that  is  not  known  about  these  Saharan 
peoples  that  all  will  welcome  the  gradual  opening  of 
the  country.  It  is  specially  to  be  noted  how  the  display 
of  military  power  has  afifected  the  Bedouins  and  the 
Berbers;  this  is  one  of  the  few  places  in  the  world  where 
the  non-militarist  finds  the  "mailed-fist"  justifiable. 
Wherever  these  peoples  have  been  brought  imder  French 
discipline  there  is  a  marked  improvement  in  their  wild 
habits  and  a  corresponding  display  of  appreciation  on 
their  part  for  the  security  of  life  and  property. 

Not  any  of  the  authoritative  writers  on  Saharan  topics 
has  a  good  word  to  say  for  the  Tuareks  (wild  Berbers), 
who,  although  allied  to  the  attractive  Kabyles  of  Mo- 
rocco and  Algiers,  are  not  to  be  compared  with  them 
in  character.  Mr.  Vischer  tells  of  his  troubles  with  the 
Tuareks,  and  his  opinion  of  them  tends  to  confirm  that 
of  all  others  who  have  expressed  themselves. 

The  Kwaidas  love  their  own  oasis  (Wunzerik)  more 
than  does  any  tribe  of  the  desert  feel  afTection  for  its 


78  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

home,  and  life  in  that  place  approaches  more  nearly  to 
an  ideal  which  satisfies  us  than,  probably,  at  any  other 
place  in  the  desert.  Here  tea  is  cultivated  and  the 
inhabitants  are  very  fond  of  the  beverage.  In  its  use 
they  have  arranged  a  ceremonial  that  is  said  to  be 
almost  as  punctilious  as  is  the  famous  one  of  Japan, 
the  cha-no-yu.  There  is  a  Senussi  poem  in  praise  of 
tea,  which  is  really  much  admired  by  those  who  are 
able  to  understand  it.  Wunzerik  is  at  the  eastern  end 
of  Wadi  Shiati,  the  most  northern  of  the  well-watered 
depressions  of  Fezzan.  The  merchants  here,  if  not 
positively  dishonest,«  are  adept  in  devising  means  for 
getting  much  money  for  small  supplies. 

The  people  of  the  oasis  of  Mandara,  where  there  is 
a  little  lake  of  natron,  are  negroes,  probably  Kanuri, 
perfect  specimens  of  the  negro  in  form  and  features, 
having  large  mouths,  thick  lips,  and  broad  noses,  but 
good  teeth  and  high  foreheads.  The  women  try  to 
make  up  for  their  utter  lack  of  physical  beauty  by  ex- 
tensive tattooing;  they  also  stain  their  faces  with  indigo 
and  dye  their  front  teeth  black  and  their  canine  teeth 
red.  Polygamy  is  permitted  but  the  expense  of  a  multi- 
plicity of  wives  induces  even  the  wealthiest  men  to  be 
satisfied  with  two,  or  three  at  the  most.  Throughout 
Bornu,  whence  these  Kanuri  come,  Islamism  is  universal 
and  is  practised  with  bigotry  and  violence.  With  these 
suggestions  about  the  Saharan  people  we  leave  them. 

Politically,  the  Sahara  belongs  partly  to  Morocco, 
partly  to  France  through  her  position  in  Algeria  and 
Tunis,  and  partly  to  Turkey  through  Tripoli,  Egypt,  etc. 
We  know  how  assiduously  France  has  been  pushing 


THE    SAHARA  79 

southward  from  her  Algerian  frontier  and  has  planned  to 
build  a  railway  across  the  desert,  by  way  of  Timbuctoo, 
to  connect  with  her  Senegambian  colony.  In  further- 
ance of  this  scheme  for  dominating  the  Sahara,  a  plan 
has  been  mooted  for  creating  an  inland  sea  of  something 
like  thirty-one  hundred  square  miles  in  area,  and  per- 
haps sixty  to  one  hundred  feet  in  depth.  The  plan  has 
been  declared  entirely  feasible  by  competent  engineers 
(M.  de  Lesseps  for  example)  and  likely  to  contribute 
much  towards  furthering  France's  ambitions;  especially 
as  against  the  awkward  spirit  of  independence  which  is 
displayed  by  the  Mahometan  populations  of  the  desert. 
It  is  not  likely,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  known  influence 
of  existing  inland  seas,  such  as  the  Caspian  and  Aral, 
that  the  construction  of  this  Saharan  Sea  will  have 
any  appreciable  effect  for  good  upon  the  rainfall  in 
the  desert. 


CHAPTER  VI 

EGYPT:    THE   MYSTERIOUS  LAND   OF 
ANCIENT  DAYS 

WE  now  purpose  giving  consideration  to  some  of 
the  attributes  of  that  mysterious  Ufe  which 
found  their  expression  in  the  monuments  and  even 
humbler  works  —  all  of  them  remarkable  in  their  vary- 
ing degrees  —  of  architect,  engineer,  scribe,  or  artisan, 
and  which  to-day  have  been  restored  to  us  through 
the  assiduous  efforts  of  competent  savants  and  the 
sustained  labour  of  intelligent,  hard-working  super- 
intendents of  native  labourers  who  have  dug  deep  into 
the  superincumbent  sand,  clearing  the  remains  of 
temple  or  monument  for  us  to  see  something  of  that 
Mysterious  Land  of  Ancient  Days.  The  present  writer 
here  admits  his  indebtedness  to  the  recently  published 
book  by  M.  Moret.* 

It  is  doubtless  correct  to  say  yet  that  history  begins 
on  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  but  the  recent  explorations  in 
Babylonia  and  Assyria  bid  fair  to  give  that  part  of  Asia 
a  record  for  antiquity  in  civilisation  which  may  ere  long 
push  Egypt  very  closely.     In  this  connection  it  is  neces- 

*  "In  the  Time  of  the  Pharaohs,"  Alexander  Moret,  Sub-Director  of 
the  Mus^e  Gnimet  and  Professor  of  Egyptology  in  L'Ecole  des  Hautes 
Etudes.  The  English  translation  by  Madame  Moret  is  well  done,  but, 
as  is  always  the  case,  those  who  are  able  to  read  the  book  in  the 
original  will  derive  even  greater  satisfaction. 

80 


EGYPT:  THE  MYSTERIOUS  LAND   8l 

sary  to  explain  the  meaning  of  the  word  Thinite,  of 
rather  modem  use  in  Egyptian  terminology.  It  denotes 
the  first  two  dynasties  of  kings,  beginning  with  Menes, 
whose  date  is  variously  given  as  from  5702  to  2691  B.C. 
Mariette,  who  is  probably,  all  things  considered,  a  most 
precise,  painstaking,  and  reliable  investigator,  says 
5004,  Brugsch  4445,  Lepsius  3892,  as  the  first  year  of 
the  first  dynasty;  the  second  continuing  down  to  4751, 
Mariette,  and  3639,  Lepsius.  They  had  their  origin  in 
the  capital  city.  Thirds,  near  the  site  of  later  Abydos, 
about  two  hundred  miles  up  the  Nile  from  Cairo  and 
famous  for  the  palace  of  Memnon  and  the  temple  of 
Osiris.  Of  this  Thinite  civilisation  M.  Moret  says: 
"The  excavations  or  researches  of  Messrs.  Maspero  and 
Barsanti  have  established  the  fact  that  the  sites  of 
Memphis  and  Sakkarah  were  occupied  by  the  Thinite 
kings;  the  researches  of  M.  Weill  have  proved  the 
existence  of  monuments  of  King  Meisekh  in  the  mines 
of  Sinai,  the  working  of  which  dates  back  to  the  first 
dynasty.  The  whole  of  Egypt,  therefore,  was  once 
under  Thinite  rule.  Thinite  civilisation  differs  funda- 
mentally from  the  culture  of  the  neoUthic  age*  in  that 
it  acquired  a  few  new  elements  of  the  utmost  importance 
—  the  use  of  metal,  the  art  of  building,  the  knowledge 
of  writing.  The  indigenous  population  could  not  have 
contributed  the  elements  of  such  considerable  progress; 
its  potters  and  carvers  did  not  become  the  smiths  and 
masons  of  Abydos  and  Negadeh.    We  are  forced  to 

*The  fact  of  there  having  been  in  Egypt  both  paleolithic  (old 
stone)  and  neolithic  (new  stone)  ages  —  that  is,  periods  during  which 
rough  flint  implements  and,  later,  dressed  ones  were  in  use  —  has  been 
satisfactorily  demonstrated. 


82  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

the  conclusion  that  some  invasion  brought  into  Egypt 
a  new  race  —  the  Egyptians  of  the  historic  period." 
At  another  place  M.  Moret  declares:  "The  question 
of  the  origins  of  Egypt  may  be  put  to-day  in  the  follow- 
ing terms:  a  race,  called  native  or  indigenous,  having 
attained  the  highest  stage  of  neolithic  civilization,  occu- 
pied the  valley  of  the  Nile;  a, foreign  race,  more  civilised, 
of  unexplained  origin,  displaced  the  first  and  founded 
around  Abydos  a  kingdom  which  we  call  Thinite,  to  use 
the  term  of  Manetho  again." 

But  M.  Moret  goes  further  and  contends  that  because 
the  language  of  these  invaders  was  completely  formed 
when  they  arrived,  using  the  signs  that  are  called  hiero- 
glyphics, "which,  while  reproducing  the  shape  of  a 
particular  object  or  being,  are  rarely  ideographic,"  and 
because  the  Egyptian  language  is  a  branch  of  the 
Semitic  trunk,  all  this  "is  a  potent  argument  in  favour 
of  the  Asiatic  origin  of  the  invaders."  Furthermore,  he 
believes  that  the  admitted  facts  "point  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  these  newcomers  came  from  Chaldea."  Since 
then  these  signs  would  justify  the  statement  that  they 
brought  with  them  a  civilisation  which  was  well  estab- 
lished, it  is  not  altogether  illogical  to  say  that  the  claim 
for  the  antiquity  of  Egyptian  history  is,  at  least,  begin- 
ning to  have  a  rival  in  that  of  Assyria  and  Babylonia; 
because  there  must  naturally  have  been  something  in 
Chaldea  from  which  to  draw.  This  theory  is  advanced 
most  tentatively,  however,  and  does  not  pretend  to  be 
destructive  of  any  recognised  history;  because  the  writer 
makes  not  the  slightest  claim  to  being  an  Egyptologist. 

Another  point  to  be  noted  in  support  of  this  argument 


EGYPT:  THE  MYSTERIOUS  LAND   83 

for  the  influence  of  Asiatic  civilisation  is  found  in  the 
interesting  chapter,  "Pharaonic  Diplomacy,"  of  M. 
Moret's  book.  In  the  summer  of  1887  some  Egyptian 
fellahs  were  pulling  down  portions  of  the  walls  of  one 
part  of  a  large  building  at  Kamak,  since  identified  as  a 
palace  of  King  Amenophis  IV  (fifteenth  century  B.C.), 
the  heretic  king.  These  peasants  discovered  some 
incised  bricks,  etc.,  which  proved  to  be  a  stock  of  Baby- 
lonian tablets,  and  when  deciphered  they  were  found 
to  be  ofiicial  communications,  notes,  and  reports  —  cor- 
respondence, in  fact  —  incimeiform  characters.  There 
were,  to  be  sure,  marginal  notes  in  the  Egyptian  char- 
acter, which  was  of  later  development;  but  the  fact 
that  a  Babylonian  scribe  was  attached  to  the  Egyptian 
"Department  of  State,"  or  "Foreign  Ofl&ce,"  over  thirty- 
five  hundred  years  ago  for  the  purpose  of  conducting 
this  diplomatic  correspondence,  certainly  seems  to  give 
a  degree  of  precedence  to  the  Babylonian  script  which 
is  worthy  of  consideration.  This  episode  is  but  one  of 
many  that  are  of  absorbing  interest  as  giving  us  a 
glimpse  to-day  of  what  the  Mysterious  Egypt  was. 

The  dedicatory  legends  cut  deep  into  the  prominent 
stones,  the  doorposts  and  lintels  of  some  of  the  ancient 
buildings  of  Eg>pt  read:  "Temples  to  endure  for  mil- 
lions of  years,  founded  for  ever  and  ever,"  and  it  was 
not  unnaturally  supposed  that  ha\dng  endured  for  so 
long  as  four  or  five  thousand  years,  or  longer,  some  of 
them  almost  intact  architecturally,  they  would  con- 
tinue to  stand  "for  ever  and  ever."  Perhaps,  had  there 
never  been  any  yielding  to  the  desire  to  see  with  our 
own   eyes  some  of   these  monuments,  aU  if  possible; 


84  AFRICATO-DAY 

had  we  been  content  with  what  myth  and  legend  told 
us,  they  might  have  slept  peacefully  and  practically 
undamaged  beneath  their  covering  of  the  desert  sands. 
But  if  there  was  to  be  material  development  in  Egypt 
it  had  to  carry  with  it  fuU  consequences,  and  one  of 
them  meant  disaster  to  those  old  monuments  imless 
modern  science  put  forth  its  hand  to  save  them;  and 
salvation  meant  restoration,  for  the  extended  irrigation 
scheme  allowed  the  Nile  water  to  work  havoc  where 
before  had  been  preservative  drjoiess.  Since  the  work 
of  excavation  has  been  prosecuted  so  actively,  it  is 
found  that  two  causes  are  operating  disastrously  and 
with  remarkable  speed  to  bring  about  the  complete 
destruction  of  those  priceless  old  buildings,  tombs, 
palaces,  and  monuments.  The  first  of  those  causes 
is  that  which  would  naturally  follow  from  the  way 
most  of  the  superterrene  edifices  had  originally  been 
constructed;  without  adequately  deep  and  broad  founda- 
tions to  bear  up  the  immense  weight  put  upon  them, 
and  the  weathering  which  would  necessarily  follow  if 
the  foundation  gave  way  or  a  defective  joint  in  the 
masonry  allowed  one  block  to  slip  from  its  place  and  let 
others,  dependent  upon  it,  follow  the  collapse.  The 
other  cause  is  the  great  accumulation  of  debris  in  which, 
because  of  human  beings  and  animals  taking  up  their 
abode  in  or  above  the  old  buildings  (which  have  been 
completely  imbedded  in  the  sand),  there  is  much  salt- 
petre, and  this  corrodes  the  masonry  whenever  it  is 
moistened  by  rain  or  when,  as  has  been  the  case  par- 
ticularly since  the  construction  of  the  great  dam  at 
Assouan,  the  Nile  water  floods  the  old  buildings  and 


EGYPT:  THE  MYSTERIOUS  LAND   85 

remains  standing  for  some  six  months,  thus  helping 
greatly  in  the  destruction  of  all  stone,  particularly 
the  granite  and  limestone  used  in  constructing  those 
buildings. 

Some  of  those  magnificent  old  edifices  were  in  such  a 
state  of  hopeless,  helpless  ruin  when  the  idea  of  trying 
to  restore  the  Egyptian  momunents,  or  at  least  attempt 
to  preserve  them  from  further  destruction,  was  first 
conceived  that  it  was  then  altogether  too  late  to  save 
them  from  their  deplorable  fate.  Others  had  practically 
disappeared  entirely.  It  is  known  that  Ousirniri,  of  the 
fifth  dynasty,  about  3500  B.C.,  built  a  grand  temple  in 
honour  of  the  sun  god,  Ra,  the  first  king  of  the  Eg>p- 
tians,  who,  they  say,  reigned  more  than  twenty-three 
thousand  years  before  Alexander's  conquest;  that  Mon- 
touhotpou,  of  the  eleventh  dynasty,  about  2500  B.C., 
had  erected  another,  in  pyramidal  form;  but  there 
is  now  nothing  to  be  seen  of  them  except  bare  ter- 
races, scattered  bas-rehefs,  and  a  few  crumbling  colon- 
nades, and  there  are  others  which  we  know  to  have 
existed,  while  there  must  have  been  many  of  which  we 
know  nothing  even  by  hearsay.  The  expert  Egyptologist 
who  visits  Karnak  may,  perhaps,  still  find  quite  near 
the  pylons  of  Thothmes  "marvellous  carved  blocks, 
half  buried,  which  are  all  that  remain  of  the  effaced 
halls  erected  by  the  Ousirtasens  and  Amendphises" ;  yet 
Karnak  was  once  the  most  famous  place  in  all  Egypt, 
a  national  sanctuary,  where  every  Pharaoh,  from  the 
chieftains  of  the  primitive  clans  to  the  Roman  Caesars, 
used  to  build  a  temple  or  a  chapel. 

The  eye  prefers  to  rest  securely  on  the  buildings  of 


86  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

the  Rameses,  or  of  the  Bubastite  kings.  There,  at  least, 
the  general  plan  of  the  Egyptian  temple  still  stands  out 
distinctly,  though  many  walls  have  fallen  in  and  the 
construction  is  complicated. 

An  Avenue  of  Sphinxes  leads  to  a  high  gate,  defended 
by  two  pylons  similar  to  the  towers  of  our  cathedrals. 
In  front  of  the  gate  are  placed  two  obelisks,  as  well  as 
colossal  statues  in  a  seated  or  standing  posture.  Cross- 
ing the  threshold,  we  enter  a  spacious  court  surrounded 
by  a  cloister  of  colonnades  or  caryatids;  in  the  centre 
is  an  altar  whereon  the  offerings  were  burned.  Walking 
up  a  gentle  incline,  we  come  to  what  is  known  as  the 
"hypostyle"  court,  where  many  rows  of  enormous  col- 
umns support,  at  the  height  of  sixty- three  to  sixty-six  feet, 
a  ceiling  of  ponderous  flagstones.  At  New  Year's,  on 
fete-days  of  the  seasons,  and  on  days  set  apart  for  divine 
or  royal  worship,  the  crowd  of  devotees  had  access  to 
this  part  of  the  building,  in  order  that  they  might  see 
the  procession  of  the  gods  or  of  the  king.  Before  entering 
into  the  court,  ablaze  with  sunshine  and  flooded  with 
light  untempered  by  any  kind  of  awning  or  screens, 
it  must  have  been  pleasant  to  Hnger  in  the  freshness 
and  dimness  of  these  high  covered  halls.  But  beyond 
this  court  no  human  being  would  dare  venture  imless 
he  were  of  divine  race,  either  in  his  own  right,  by  birth, 
or  by  initiation.  Only  the  high  priest  and  the  king 
had  access  to  the  sanctuary,  a  central  chamber,  low 
and  massively  constructed,  with  no  other  opening  than 
the  door.  There  was  installed  behind  the  bolted  and 
sealed  panels,  in  complete  darkness  almost,  the  statue 
of  the  god,  placed  in  an  ark  or  granite  naos,  waiting 


?o 


H 


EGYPT:  THE  MYSTERIOUS  LAND   87 

for  the  celebrant  who  was  to  summon  him  to  activity 
by  force  of  secret  rites.* 

There  are  some  temples  which  have  been  but  little 
damaged  by  the  weather,  and  because  they  were  sunk 
in  the  living  rock,  so  that  they  were  not  attractive  as 
residences  for  human  beings,  have  suffered  less  than 
many  others  at  the  hand  of  man.  At  Deir-el-Bahrif 
the  underground  part  of  the  temple  is  practically  unin- 
jured; as  is  also  the  large  speos  of  Abu  Simbel,J  which 
is  Ughted  to  its  very  depths  by  the  rays  of  the  rising 
sun,  and  whose  entrance  is  guarded  by  four  colossi 
chiselled  from  the  soHd  rock. 

Some  of  the  superterrene  temples,  also,  are  in  remark- 
ably good  state  of  preservation.  Those  which  were 
repaired  or  entirely  reconstructed  by  the  Ptolemies  and 
Caesars  at  Edfu  (on  the  left  bank  of  the  Nile  in  latitude 
24°  59'  N.),  Philae  (an  island  in  the  Nile  sixty  miles  south 
of  the  last  mentioned),  Denderah  (on  the  river,  a  hun- 
dred and  thirty  miles  north  of  Philae)  were  built  about 
a  thousand  years  after  those  which  have  been  described. 
They  were  well  cared  for  until  the  fourth  century  of  the 
Christian  era;  they  show  a  more  distinct  and  uniform 
plan  in  their  construction  than  do  the  older  edifices,  and 

*  Adapted  from  M.  Moret,  op.  cit. 

t  Deir-el-Bahri.  Here  in  1881  M.  Maspero  made  by  chance  a 
remarkable  archaeological  discovery  —  that  of  a  number  of  mummies  of 
the  Pharaohs,  including  some  of  the  most  famous  of  the  Egyptian  kings, 
among  them  Thothmes  II  and  Thothmes  HI,  the  conqueror  of  Assyria, 
Seti  I,  and  the  great  Rameses  II,  the  "Pharaoh  of  the  oppression." 
These  mummies  are  in  a  remarkable  state  of  preservation  and  supply  a 
not  inadequate  picture  of  the  features  of  the  sovereigns  in  Ufe.  See 
Century  Dictionary  and  Chapter  VII  infra. 

t  In  Upper  Egypt,  built  by  Rameses  II,  nineteenth  d}auisty,  about 
1300  B.C. 


88  AFRICATO-DAY 

it  is  thought  by  some  "perhaps  the  harmonious  pro- 
portions of  Greek  art  influenced  the  last  Egyptian 
architects."  If  this  was  so,  it  cannot  truthfully  be  said 
to  have  been  a  real  improvement.  "The  largest  of  the 
Ptolemaic  structures  no  longer  give  that  impression  of 
heroic  grandeur  which  is  striking  in  the  case  of  Karnak 
and  of  the  Rameseum;  their  outlines  are  stiff  and  hard; 
their  dimensions  appear  meagre  even  when  they  are  vast; 
the  decoration  is  overdone  rather  than  sumptuous;  the 
rehefs  and  inscriptions  show  a  compromise  between  the 
reaUstic  modelling  of  Greek  art  and  the  hieratic  gener- 
alisation of  the  old  national  style,  and  as  a  result  are 
seen  those  sad  and  monotonous  faces  that  make  a  visit 
to  Esneh  and  to  Denderah  painful."  Yet  there  is  much 
that  attracts  at  all  three  of  these  places  and  a  great  deal 
which  justly  calls  forth  praise  even  from  those  who  are 
disposed  to  be  technically  critical. 

Briefly  summarising,  it  must  be  said  that  the  temples 
which  were  built  before  the  advent  of  the  eighteenth 
dynasty*  are  nothing  but  ruins  which  appeal  to  the 
archaeologist  only;  that  the  monuments  of  the  next 
period  remain  in  an  unsatisfactory  state  of  partial  de- 
struction, and  "only  the  temples  last  constructed  seem 
still  to  defy  the  centuries." 

Besides  the  comparatively  transient  causes  of  destruc- 
tion to  which  allusion  has  been  made  briefly,  there  should 
be  mentioned  some  others;  for  we  cannot  discuss  all 
exhaustively.  Some  of  these  cannot  truthfully  be  said 
to  add  much  lustre  to  our  boasted  Christian  civilisation 

*  Mariette  combines  the  seventeenth,  eighteenth,  and  nineteenth 
dynasties  in  one,  calling  that  the  eighteenth,  2214  to  1462  B.C. 
Lepsius  gives  1591  as  the  date  of  the  eighteenth. 


EGYPT:  THE  MYSTERIOUS  LAND   89 

that  was,  in  the  early  centuries,  iconoclastic  if  it  was 
nothing  else.  The  temples  of  Egypt,  in  particular,  were 
frightfully  neglected  for  a  long  time  from  internal  as 
well  as  foreign  causes.  The  Roman  Emperor  Theodo- 
sius  I  (346-395  A.D.),  having  yielded  submission  to  the 
Christian  prelate,  Ambrose,  one  of  the  Fathers  of  the 
Latin  Church  and  for  a  time  Bishop  of  Milan,  prohibited 
every  form  of  religious  worship  except  that  of  Chris- 
tianity; and  inasmuch  as  Egypt  was  then  imder  his 
dominion,  the  temples  of  that  land  (when  not  converted 
into  churches)  were  given  over  to  the  ravages  of  the 
weather  and  —  what  was  often  far  more  disastrous  —  to 
those  wrought  by  the  hand  of  man.  Until  that  time 
great  care  and  loving  attention  had  been  given  them,  and 
it  is  made  clear  by  recorded  tradition,  as  well  as  other 
satisfactory  evidence,  that  it  was  the  constant  endeavour 
of  the  Pharaohs  to  maintain  the  tombs  in  good  order 
"and  that  is  why  such  munificent  sums  were  expended 
in  endowing  and  supporting  the  sacerdotal  colleges  that 
were  entrusted  with  the  maintenance  of  the  sacred 
buildings."  Sometimes  the  State's  income  ran  short, 
as  was  the  case  most  conspicuously  after  the  great  inva- 
sions; those  of  the  Hyksos,  the  Assyrians,  the  Persians, 
and  others,  had  left  the  temples  despoiled  of  almost 
everything  valuable.  Not  infrequently,  after  one  of 
these  disasters,  complete  rebuilding  was  necessary  to 
replace  the  edifice  and  properly  equip  it.  The  king, 
from  his  privy  purse  (although,  to  be  sure,  that  means 
the  whole  of  the  revenue!),  bore  the  entire  burden 
of  the  expense,  no  matter  whether  he  was  a  Pha- 
raoh, a  Ptolemy,  or  a  Caesar;  for  being  considered  the 


9©  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

descendant  of  the  gods,  it  was  incumbent  upon  him 
to  preserve  the  abodes  of  his  ancestors. 

Had  the  temples  been  left  to  themselves,  even  after 
the  pagans  had  been  driven  from  power,  perhaps  they 
might  have  got  along  pretty  well,  because  of  their 
solidity  and  the  preservative  climate.  But  when  the 
Christian  priests  appeared,  their  pious  zeal  (and  we 
cannot  help  stigmatising  it  as  mistaken  in  too  many 
instances!)  led  them  to  destroy  priceless  buildings  with 
their  contents,  to  deface  reHefs  and  beautiful  carvings, 
and  to  efface  inscriptions  even  when  such  were  religiously 
harmless.  "At  Denderah,  the  smoke  of  their  camp-fires 
blackened  the  ceiling  of  the  halls;  at  Luxor  they  con- 
verted the  antechamber  of  the  sanctuary  into  a  church; 
even  to  this  day  the  stucco,  with  which  they  covered 
up  the  scenes  of  the  Egyptian  ritual,  dishonours  the 
walls  and  conceals  the  reliefs  of  Amenophis  II.  Else- 
where they  have  copied,  in  red  ink,  passages  from  the 
Fathers,  decrees  of  the  councils,  and  entire  sermons  in 
Coptic  language."  Time  and  space  forbid  of  even 
touching  upon  the  irreparable  destruction  wrought  by  the 
followers  of  Mahomet,  the  very  consummation  of  the 
religious  fanatic  and  iconoclast,  in  the  Arabian  and 
Turkish  invasions  and  since  the  domination  of  the  latter. 
In  passing  through  the  streets  of  Cairo  the  observant 
traveller  will  see  bits  of  stelae  and  fragments  of  reliefs, 
spoils  from  the  old  monuments  of  Memphis  and  Heli- 
opolis,  worked  into  the  masonry  of  mosques  and 
palaces,  yet  still  to  be  seen  openly  here  and  there.  This 
systematic  destruction  continued  until  well  down  into 
modern  times,  because  the  temple  of  Erment,  the  last 


EGYPT:  THE  MYSTERIOUS  LAND   9I 

relic  of  the  oldest  Theban  shrine,  is  known  to  have  been 
in  good  condition  one  hundred  years  or  so  ago;  but  it 
was  pulled  down  most  needlessly  and  the  materials  used 
for  building  purposes.  We  cannot  hold  even  the  savants 
entirely  blameless  in  this  iconoclasm;  the  earliest  Egyp- 
tologists, besides  helping  themselves  most  ruthlessly, 
trained  the  Arabs  and  the  Copts  in  the  art  of  plundering, 
and  before  their  rapacity  was  checked  by  oflScial  control 
incalculable  damage  was  done.  Thanks  to  the  surprising 
co-operation  of  the  Turkish  ofl&cials  with  the  efforts  of 
American  and  European  scientists  and  technologists, 
this  wholesale  senseless  despoiUng  is  now  virtually 
suppressed. 

It  can  hardly  be  necessary  to  say  that  there  are  hun- 
dreds of  pyramids  scattered  over  the  length  and  breadth 
of  Egypt;  but  those  near  the  west  bank  of  the  Nile, 
opposite  Cairo  and  between  the  head  of  the  Delta  and 
the  oases  of  Fayum,  those  of  Lower  Egypt,  stand  out 
most  conspicuously,  not  only  as  a  matter  of  fact  but  in 
literature,  being  the  ones  of  which  all  think  when  mention 
is  made  of  the  pyramids  of  Egypt.  They  loom  up  in  the 
dry  clear  air  long  before  reaching  Cairo,  whether  the 
visitor  comes  from  Alexandria  or  from  Port  Said  or 
Ismalia,  rising  from  the  sands  that  are  themselves  high 
above  the  cultivated  fields  of  the  river  valley.  There 
are  about  forty  of  them  existing  now,  although  many  are 
quite  small  when  compared  with  the  "Great  Pyramid," 
commonly  called  Cheops,  built  by,  and  the  tomb  of, 
Khufu,  of  the  fourth  dynasty,  who  lived  about  2800- 
2700  B.C.  or  a  century  earlier.  For  a  long  time,  even 
until  the  early  years  of  the  present  century,  it  was 


92  AFRICATO-DAY 

thought  "that  the  beginnings  of  Egyptian  history  and 
the  most  ancient  monuments  of  mankind  were  to  be 
found  about  the  pyramids,  but  the  recent  discovery  of 
the  prehistoric  cemeteries  and  royal  tombs  of  Abydos 
have  proved  the  existence  of  the  first  two  dynasties 
and  disclosed,  in  broad  outlines,  the  Thinite  dynasties." 
Readers  who  are  interested  in  quaint  myths  are  recom- 
mended to  read  that  one  which  tells  of  King  Khufu's 
imfatherly  scheme  for  replenishing  his  funds  when  he 
had  exhausted  his  treasures  in  building  "the  first 
pyramid." 

It  is  evident  now  that  the  pyramidal  form  of  these 
grand  tombs  was  not  the  result  of  mere  chance;  on  the 
contrary  it  was  really  an  evolution  from  a  primitive 
mode  of  sepulture.  "The  prehistoric  inhabitants  of 
Egypt  buried  their  dead  in  pits  where  the  body,  interred 
at  no  great  depth,  was  surroimded  by  the  domestic 
vessels  that  were  used  by  the  deceased."  Then  came 
brick  buildings,  with  the  victorious  race  from  Chaldea; 
then  the  jars  and  implements  were  placed  in  rooms 
adjoining  the  sepulchral  chamber.  This  was  the  royal 
tomb  at  the  beginning  of  the  Thinite  period,  and  slowly 
was  evolved  the  great  pyramid  of  "Cheops." 

The  Sphinx  of  Ghizeh  dates  from  probably  the  time 
of  the  second  djoiasty,  and  is  now  thought  to  be  older 
than  the  pyramid  of  Ghizeh.  Little  need  be  said  of 
the  appearance  of  this  ambitious  work,  since  all  are  so 
familiar  with  "the  meditative  majesty  of  the  splendid 
face,"  which,  in  spite  of  its  being  brutally  mutilated, 
shows  to  what  degree  of  technical  skill  and  expressive 
power  the  old  Egyptian  artists  had  attained.     There 


Cnt>\rifikt,  Underwood  ir  Underwood,  S .  Y. 

On  the  Shol  lder  of  the  Great  Sphinx 


EGYPT:  THE  MYSTERIOUS  LAND   93 

are  many  other  monuments  in  Egypt  which  belong  in 
the  domain  of  ancient  history;  some  of  the  obelisks, 
the  monuments  to  the  sacred  bulls  of  Apis,  the  laby- 
rinth cannot  with  propriety  be  discussed  here,  and  yet 
all  who  desire  to  be  thoroughly  informed  should  read 
of  them. 

Here  is  but  a  faint  outline  of  what  modern  research, 
excavation,  and  restoration  have  done  to  bring  back  to 
us  something  of  the  mysterious  land  of  olden  time,  and 
it  seems  as  if  there  can  be  but  few  parts  of  the  earth 
which  hold  such  allurements  for  the  tourist  as  does 
Egypt  to-day.  The  opportunity  to  see  the  handiwork 
of  man  at  the  dawn  of  history  is  here  furnished  in  temple, 
tomb,  and  pyramid.  The  ordinary  tourist  cannot  but 
find  that  which  holds  his  interest,  the  artist  that  which 
appeals  to  his  keenest  sense  of  form  and  colour,  the 
archaeologist  an  inexhaustible  fund  of  precious  material. 
There  is,  however,  more  in  Egypt  than  that  which  may 
take  one  away  from  the  physical  comforts  of  life,  and 
some  of  these  are  to  be  the  subject  for  our  consideration 
in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  VII 
EGYPT:  THE  LAND  WE  NOW  KNOW 

TO  speak  of  Egypt  in  its  aspect  of  To-day,  we  ought 
to  commence  with  the  climate.  It  is  never 
intensely  hot,  although  this  statement  may  be  surprising 
to  those  who  think  of  ''Afric's  golden  sands";  yet  it 
should  be  borne  in  mind  that  Egypt  lies  between  21° 
and  32°  north  latitude,  and  that  very  little  of  it  is  really 
within  the  tropics.  It  is  always  warm,  and  the  first  part 
of  the  summer  is  too  trying  for  those  not  acclimated 
to  justify  recommending  strangers  to  visit  Eg}^pt  at  that 
season.  Still,  we  do  know  that  many  Americans  and 
Europeans,  those  who  are  not  accustomed  at  home  to 
intense  and  continued  heat,  have  passed  the  summer 
in  the  land  and  without  serious  results,  save  in  the 
few  exceptional  cases.  Those  who  have  done  this  are 
merchants,  industrialists,  missionaries,  and  the  students 
engaged  in  research,  excavation,  restoration  of  temples 
and  monuments,  or  kindred  pursuits  in  the  cause  of 
science  that  are  associated  in  our  mind  with  the  word 
"Egyptology,"  and  to  their  successes  we  owe  practi- 
cally all  that  there  is  of  Egypt  To-day.  The  Egyptians 
themselves  speak  of  two  summers;  the  first  includes  the 
months  of  March,  April,  and  May,  and  it  is  the  most 
undesirable  and  sickly  season,  because  of  the  changeable 
weather,  the  heat,  and  the  hot  winds  which  prevail  at 

94 


EGYPT:    THE    LAND    WE    NOW    KNOW      95 

that  time  and  are  liable  to  cause  various  sicknesses. 
But  in  the  ''second  summer,"  June,  July,  and  August, 
and  during  the  autumn  and  winter,  one  breathes  a 
much  cooler  air,  the  weather  is  more  settled,  and  it  is 
then  really  delightful  to  be  in  the  country;  yet  strangers 
should  be  careful  about  incautious  wanderings  in  the 
Nile  Valley  when  the  water  of  the  inundation  has  been 
drawn  off  and  the  mud  is  drying  up.  The  cold  of  winter 
is  hardly  entitled  to  the  name,  except  for  about  seven 
days  in  the  month  of  February,  which  the  Arabs  mark 
off  very  precisely,  seventh  to  fourteenth,  and  call  them 
Berd  al  ajuz,  "The  old  woman's  cold."  Yet  among  the 
permanent  residents,  both  foreigners  and  natives,  and 
many  of  the  transient  visitors,  those  who  are  even  tolerably 
rich  wear  furs  in  winter,  because  of  the  uncertainty  of 
the  weather.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the  phrase,  "the 
cloudless  blue  skies  of  Eg>^t,"  and  there  is  thoroughly 
good  reason  for  it.  There  are  but  few  places  where  rain 
is  known  at  all,  and  even  where  it  is,  it  is  a  phenomenon 
that  is  distinguished  as  being  something  which  happens 
once  a  year  or  as  occurring  perhaps  once  in  three  or 
four  years.  Asthmatic  people  would  do  well  to  shun 
Egypt  at  all  times,  because  the  fine  particles  of  sand, 
ever  present  in  the  air,  are  very  irritating  to  the  throat. 
Pulmonary  patients,  on  the  other  hand,  almost  secure 
a  new  lease  of  life  in  the  desiccated  air,  and  when  they 
can  get  comfortable  quarters  right  away  in  the  desert, 
it  is  safe  to  recommend  them  to  go  there.  With  increase 
of  travel  and  with  the  encouragement  that  is  making 
the  natives  more  tolerant  towards  strangers  of  another 
faith  and  more  friendly  generally,  it  is  yearly  becoming 


96  AFRICATO-DAY 

easier  for  invalids  to  find  comfortable  lodgings,  and  there 
is  always  at  their  command  that  most  seductive  tent 
life.  For  the  strong,  the  enthusiastic,  Egypt  is  perhaps 
the  most  charming  of  all  Winter  Playgrounds,  provided 
the  more  strenuous  activity  of  such  places  as  the  Winter 
Tyrol  does  not  appeal  to  them. 

"He  who  hath  not  seen  Cairo  hath  not  seen  the  world: 
its  soil  is  gold;  its  Nile  is  a  wonder;  its  women  are  like 
the  black-eyed  virgins  of  Paradise;  its  houses  are  palaces; 
and  its  air  is  soft  —  its  odours  surpassing  that  of  aloes- 
wood  and  cheering  the  heart:  how  can  Cairo  be  other- 
wise when  it  is  the  Mother  of  the  World?"*  We  are 
prepared  to  subscribe  to  all  this,  excepting  the  odours; 
there  are  some  of  these,  in  many  parts  of  the  old  town 
especially,  which  are  anything  but  those  of  "Araby  the 
Blest."  Of  the  women  another  writer,  an  Englishman 
whose  statement  is  apposite,  even  if  it  is  now  more  than 
a  hundred  years  old,  said:  "Before  we  take  leave  of  this 
Egyptian  MetropoUs  [Cairo],  we  shall  beg  leave  to  add 
a  few  observations  concerning  the  Fair  Sex  that  live  in  it. 
The  generality  of  them  are  brought  thither  by  the  Cara- 
vans either  from  Georgia,  Mengrelia,  or  other  places, 
where  the  unnatural  parents  make  a  trade  of  selling  them, 
and  where  they  are  commonly  very  beautiful  and  finely 
shaped;  and  others  drawn  from  Abyssinia,  where  though 
they  are  of  a  very  tawney  complexion,  yet  are  so  slender, 
tall,  and  genteel,  and  have  such  a  majestic  air,  as  quite 
captivates  the  men  here,  and  makes  them  despise  their 
own  native  women  for  them.  And  as  those  foreign 
females  have  commonly  little  or  no  education,  are  bought 

*  "The  Thousand  and  One  Nights." 


EGYPT:    THE    LAND    WE    NOW    KNOW      97 

and  kept  only  as  servile  creatures,  rather  to  cool  their 
lust  than  engage  their  affections,  it  can  be  no  wonder  if, 
considering  their  idle  life,  the  heat  of  the  climate,  and 
the  small  satisfaction  they  receive  from  the  embraces 
of  their  lords  and  masters,  which  must  be  hkewise  less 
frequent  than  their  wishes,  considering  the  number  they 
have  of  them  for  the  same  use,  we  say  it  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at,  if  they  naturally  give  way  to  gallantry 
and  intriguing,  and  are  so  ingenious  and  successful  in  it. 
They  have,  however,  found  the  way  to  gain  so  far  on 
their  husbands,  that  they  are  allowed  greater  liberty 
both  in  this  Metropolis  and  almost  all  over  the  kingdom, 
than  in  any  part  of  the  East;  so  that  they  can  go  abroad 
a  visiting  from  morning  to  night;  divert  themselves  with 
their  relatives  and  acquaintances,  walk  along  the  streets 
with  a  retinue  of  their  servants,  and  appear  at  public 
places,  and  on  public  rejoicings,  such  as  the  birth  of  a 
Prince,  the  gaining  of  a  Victory,  etc.,  on  which  occasions 
they  take  special  delight.  They  wear  a  variety  of  dresses 
and  the  appearance  of  the  scene  is  not  unlike  that  of 
Venice  at  the  Carnival  time.  They  are  attended  by 
eimuchs  and  good  order  is  kept ;  there  being  no  indecency 
or  affront  in  the  streets;  but  they  elude  their  guards  and 
allow  themselves  greater  liberties  than  any  Turkish 
women.  Unmarried  women  must  be  very  careful,  for 
any  immodesty  on  their  part  condemns  them  to  ceHbacy, 
or  it  may  even  be  punishment  with  death.  Married 
women  are  more  freed  from  restraint,  and  not  only 
indulge  in  these  dangerous  but  stolen  pleasures  as  in  no 
other  Mahometan  country;  but,  as  Lucas  tells,  they 
visit  each  other,  drink  coffee,  sherbet,  and  such  liquors, 


98  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

smoke,  and  tell  erotic  stories,  until  the  effect  leads  to 
showing  themselves  at  the  windows,  where  they  act 
lecherously  to  tempt  beholders."* 

This  naturally  leads  to  mention  of  the  dancing-girls, 
who  have  the  reputation  of  being  the  most  consummate 
of  their  kind.  Their  posturings  range  from  that  which 
is  the  simplest,  most  innocuous  pantomime  to  sug- 
gestiveness  that  is  positively  indecent.  These  girls 
are  wanton,  but  not  necessarily  immoral;  they  are  about 
the  same  as  the  geisha  of  Japan,  only  the  Egyptians  are 
so  much  the  superior  in  grace,  abandon,  and  physical 
attractiveness  that  there  is  no  exact  comparison  to  be 
made  between  them.  Those  who  have  seen  these  profes- 
sional posseuses  in  all  parts  of  the  world  unanimously 
award  the  palm  to  the  Egyptians. 

Out  in  the  country,  where  one  sees  those  who  are  the 
nearest  to  the  true  Egyptians  to  be  found,  the  men  and 
women  are  stout  and  tawny.  The  men  are  labourers 
engaged  in  agriculture  and  in  rearing  cattle.  It  seems 
almost  unnecessary  here  to  dwell  upon  the  marvellous 
fertility  of  the  Nile  Valley,  where  never  less  than  two 
crops  are  garnered  and  often  three  and  four.  This 
fecundity  is  so  absolutely  dependent  upon  the  annual 
overflow  of  the  Nile  that  it  seems  proper  to  defer  our 
little  discussion  of  it  to  the  next  chapter,  which  is  to  deal 
specifically  with  that  river.  There  is,  however,  one  super- 
stition connected  with  the  overflow  that  should  properly 
be  mentioned;  it  is  that  the  Egyptian  peasants  affirm 
most  positively  that  nine-tenths  of  the  married  women 
conceive  only  at  the  time  when  the  Nile  water  is  rising 
*"A  Complete  System  of  Geography,"  etc. 


EGYPT:    THE    LAND    WE    NOW    KNOW      99 

and  spreading  over  the  land,  bringing  with  it  promise 
of  plenty  and  making  all  hearts  rejoice.  These  peasant 
women  often  give  birth  to  twins,  and  not  infrequently 
triplets.  They  are  noted  for  their  grand  walk  and 
carriage;  some  of  our  own  writers  making  comparison 
between  their  stride  and  the  "strut"  of  the  American 
girl.     Even  if  true,  this  is  most  ungaUant! 

It  is  said,  and  truthfully,  that  at  Alexandria,  Port 
Said,  and  Cairo  one  sees  a  greater  mixture  of  peoples 
from  all  comers  of  the  world  than  in  any  other  three 
places  of  one  and  the  same  country  on  earth.  London, 
doubtless,  will  show  a  more  motley  collection  and  a 
greater  number  of  certain  types  in  one  place.  But  in 
the  winter  season,  one  who  stands  on  the  verandah  or 
terrace  of  a  hotel  in  Cairo  will  hear  almost  every  lan- 
guage of  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa.  It  is,  probably,  the 
most  kaleidoscopic  place  of  the  Near  East,  and,  in  a  way, 
one  of  the  most  democratic.  The  crowd  of  guides  and 
donkey  boys,  the  camel  drivers,  the  hackney  cabjnen, 
and  now  the  chauffeurs,  assume  that  all  the  tourists 
are  simply  walking  money-bags  and  that  it  is  their 
privilege  and  duty  to  get  as  much  of  the  contents  as 
possible.  Milord,  the  aristocratic  British  nobleman,  and 
the  plebeian  American  multi-milHonaire  are  pretty  much 
the  same  to  hotel  people,  guide,  and  donkey  boy;  with 
perhaps  a  little  in  favour  of  the  American  who,  in  Egypt 
as  everywhere  else  in  the  world  where  tourists  foregather, 
has  tried  his  best  —  and  most  successfully  —  to  spoil 
pleasure  and  debauch  the  natives  by  the  absurd  munifi- 
cence of  his  "tips."  For  example;  at  the  pyramids, 
where  —  as  everyone  knows  —  if  it  is  not  absolutely 


lOO  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

necessary  for  each  climber  to  have  two  or  three  "pushers  " 
to  help  him  get  up  the  Brobdingnagean  steps,  custom 
has  decided  that  he  must  engage  them  or  he  will  not  be 
allowed  to  ascend,  half  a  piastre,  say  two  and  one-half 
cents  of  our  money,  ought  to  be  ample  for  each  man; 
but  the  extravagant  American  has  raised  this  to  two  or 
three  piastres. 

There  may  be  a  certain  exclusiveness  among  the 
visitors  themselves,  yet  it  is  astonishing  how  the  most 
seemingly  incongruous  human  elements  mingle  at  Cairo 
in  placid  content.  The  Cook's  parties  are  made  up,  at 
times,  of  people  who  represent  the  most  unapproachable 
of  aristocratic  circles,  with  others  who  are  most 
offensively  nouveau  riche;  and  after  a  day's  jaunt  to 
the  pyramids  these  same  oil  and  vinegar  factors  may, 
perchance,  mingle  together  in  temporary  harmony  for 
a  trip  up  the  Nile,  or  some  other  excursion  wherein 
there  is  greater  satisfaction  (and  economy  for  the 
cautious  aristocrat!)  with  a  goodly  company  than  for  an 
individual  or  two. 

In  Cairo  itself  there  is  so  much  to  do,  so  many  places 
to  visit  that  every  book  discloses  something  which  is 
not  named  in  others,  and  even  the  rashest  of  writers 
would  not  presume  to  tell  of  all  of  them  in  such  a  little 
volume  as  this.  Only  a  very  few  will  be  mentioned,  but 
every  tourist  will  find  each  one  of  them  leads  to  others, 
imtil  a  whole  winter  season  will  prove  to  be  too  short 
a  time  wherein  to  exhaust  the  attractions  of  Cairo. 

After  the  pyramids  and  the  Sphinx  —  for  that  is 
almost  sure  to  be  the  first  excursion  —  a  visit  to  the 
National  Museum,  sometimes  called  the  Ghizeh  Museum, 


EGYPT:     THE    LAND    WE    NOW    KNOW       lOI 

because  it  was  once  the  palace  of  Ghizeh,  the  old  Harem- 
lik  ("Palace  of  the  Harem")  of  Ismail  Pasha,  will  be 
attractive,  and  here  the  wealth  of  material  is  truly 
indescribable.  There  is  a  black  granite  stele  which  was 
discovered  at  Thebes  in  1896  by  Professor  Flinders- 
Petrie.  It  is  what  may  be  called  a  stone  palimpsest, 
because  there  were  manifestly  two  inscriptions  cut,  as 
the  signs  of  erasure  show,  the  one  over  the  other.  The 
earlier  was  done  in  the  time  of  Amenhotep  II  (reigned 
about  1566  B.C.);  the  later  one  was  cut  in  the  time  of 
Seti  I,  or  Sethos  (about  1366  B.C.),  who  was  the  father 
of  Rameses  II.  The  latter  is  of  the  greatest  importance 
to  Bible  students,  because  on  the  back  of  the  stone  there 
is  a  long  description  of  wars  waged  between  Libyans 
(Egyptians)  and  Syrians,  in  which  this  statement  is 
made:  "The  people  of  Israel  is  spoilt:  it  hath  no  seed." 
This  is  the  first  allusion  to  the  Israelites,  by  name,  found 
as  yet  on  any  Egyptian  monument,  and  is  several  cen- 
turies older  than  any  allusion  to  them  in  Assyrian  records.* 
As  the  sale  of  Joseph  is  traditionally  said  to  have  taken 
place  during  the  reign  of  the  Hyksos  or  shepherd  king 
Apepa,  probably  the  Aphobis  of  Manetho's  Ust,  who 
ruled  at  Avaris  (Zoan)  about  1700  B.C.,  this  allusion 
may  perchance  refer  to  the  fact  that  the  children  of  Israel 
had  been  called  upon  to  aid  the  Egyptians  in  war  and 
had  proved  to  be  inefficient  as  soldiers,  or  possibly  abject 
cowards.  The  Exodus  is  usually  assigned  to  the  time 
of  Rameses  II  (1300  B.C.). 

In  1 88 1  rumours  reached  the  authorities  in  Cairo  that 
an   Arab,  known   among   his  fellows  as  "The   Tomb 
*  Vide  Murray's  "  Handbook  to  Egypt." 


102  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Robber,"  because  of  his  successes  in  abstracting  treasures, 
was  up  to  some  sort  of  mischief  at  Deir-el-Bahri,  west 
of  Thebes.  Upon  investigation  being  made  it  was  found 
that  Ahmed,  "The  Tomb  Robber,"  had  opened  a  shaft 
leading  down  into  a  vast  mortuary  chapel  and  had  played 
upon  the  superstition  of  his  comrades,  to  keep  them 
from  intruding  upon  his  find,  by  declaring  that  the  well 
was  the  abode  of  a  fearful  djinn  (an  evil  spirit).  To 
give  colour  and  odour  to  his  story  he  had  thrown  into 
the  shaft  the  bodies  of  some  donkeys,  and  the  effluvia 
from  their  decomposition  made  the  other  Arabs  believe 
Ahmed's  story,  for  djinns  are  supposed  to  exhale  a  most 
disgusting  stench.  When  Messrs.  Brugsch  and  Maspero 
went  to  the  place  they  discovered  thirty-six  coffins,  all  of 
them  containing  the  mummies  of  kings,  queens,  princes, 
and  princesses.  Brugsch's  account  of  this  find  is  most 
sensational.  The  mummies  were  all  taken  away  for 
careful  study,  and  to-day,  in  the  National  Museum,  we 
may  see  some  of  them.  One  is  of  particular  interest, 
that  of  Rameses  II,  whose  father,  Seti  I,  is  the  Pharaoh 
with  whom  Moses  and  Aaron  had  so  much  to  do.  It  was 
due  to  his  opposition  to  the  departure  of  the  Children  of 
Israel  that  the  plagues  came,  and  it  was  he  who  com- 
manded that  all  Hebrew  boy  babies  should  be  drowned 
in  the  Nile.  His  mummy  is  one  of  the  most  remarkably 
well  preserved  that  have  yet  been  discovered. 

When  a  number  of  mummies  were  to  be  sent  to  muse- 
ums of  Europe  and  America,  they  were  put  on  board  a 
large  lighter  in  the  river  and  arranged  side  by  side.  As 
the  boat  was  moving  away  from  the  bank  many  —  per- 
haps all  —  of  the  mummies  seemed  to  come  back  to  life; 


EGYPT:     THE     LAND     WE    NOW    KNOW        IO3 

certainly  they  moved  and  the  heads  seemed  to  rise  as  if 
the  bodies  were  turning,  so  that  their  eyes  might  take  a 
last  look  at  the  place  where  these  old  kings  and  queens 
had  lain  in  peace  for  over  two  thousand  years.  The 
effect  up)on  the  boatmen  was  most  panicky,  and  even  the 
unsuperstitious  foreigners  felt  as  if  something  imcanny 
were  occurring.  The  explanation  is  absurdly  simple  — 
the  heat  of  the  sun  had  caused  irregular  expansion  of 
certain  parts;  but  it  was  never  a  satisfactory  explana- 
tion to  those  Nile  boatmen,  who  were  for  a  long  time 
loath  to  handle  mummies  as  cargo. 

At  the  risk,  which  in  this  case  practically  is  certainty, 
of  controverting  one  of  the  most  popular  stories  of  sight- 
seeing in  Cairo,  the  truth  had  better  be  told  about 
the  famous  ceremony  which  is  called,  commonly  but 
absurdly,  "The  Procession  of  the  Holy  Carpet."  There 
is  much  confusion  about  this,  and  to  clear  it  up  requires 
a  little  careful  explanation.  The  ^a' 6a  (Arabic;  literally 
"a  square  building")  is  the  small  block-like  structure  at 
the  very  heart  of  the  Great  Mosque,  Mecca,  the  most 
sacred  shrine  of  the  followers  of  the  Prophet.  In  this 
chest-like  sanctuary  is  a  sacred  stone,  hajar  al  aswud 
(said  to  be  a  ruby  which  came  down  from  heaven,  but 
now  it  is  blackened  by  the  pilgrims'  tears,  shed  for  sin). 
The  kaha  is  opened  twice  or  thrice  annually,  but  only 
the  faithful  are  permitted  to  approach  it.  Now,  when 
the  caravan  of  pilgrims  for  Mecca  sets  out  from  Cairo, 
in  it  is  a  small  palanquin  on  the  back  of  a  camel.  This 
palanquin  is  called  mahmal.  It  contains  nothing  of  the 
least  importance,  probably  nothing  at  all,  and  is  only  a 
symbol  of  sovereignty.    But  many  Prankish  visitors  think 


I04  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

—  indeed  they  are  so  told  by  some  of  the  citizens  — 
that  this  little  box  contains  the  kiswa,  or  robe,  which  is 
spread  over  the  kaba,  and  which  is  renewed  every  year. 
This  is  manifestly  an  absurdity,  for  the  mahmal  could 
not  begin  to  contain  the  kiswa.  The  procession  that  is 
miscalled  ''The  Procession  of  the  Holy  Carpet"  —  for  it 
is  evident  there  is  no  carpet  about  it  —  is  really  a  street 
ceremony  in  which  the  kiswa  is  carried  from  the  place 
where  the  material  is  woven  to  the  Hasanen,  the  most 
sacred  mosque  in  the  city,  there  to  be  sewed  together 
into  sections  which  are  packed  in  ordinary  boxes  to  take 
it  to  Mecca.  Still  this  procession,  after  its  description 
has  been  despoiled  of  some  of  its  romantic  fiction,  is 
certainly  one  of  the  things  to  see,  if  possible.  "I  was 
privileged  to  see  it  from  the  balcony  of  a  native  school 
that  looked  out  on  the  comer  of  two  streets.  In  one 
direction  we  looked  down  the  street  through  which  the 
procession  came;  in  the  other  down  the  street  to  that 
very  sacred  mosque  of  the  Hasanen  itself.  .  .  .  Down 
the  street,  then,  came  the  kiswa,  carried  on  wooden 
frames  to  show  its  embroidery  of  rich  gold  flashing  in 
the  sunlight,  and  with  it  and  after  it  trooped  a  motley 
procession  of  darwishes  of  all  the  different  fraternities  of 
Egypt  —  the  Qadirites,  the  Rifa'ites,  the  Ahmadites,  the 
Burhamites,  the  Sa'dites  —  all  carrying  banners  of  their 
own  colours,  beating  little  drums,  and  chanting  their 
distinctive  Htanies.  As  they  went  by,  the  air  was 
charged  with  emotional  electricity;  all  nerves  were 
a-quiver  and  ready  to  leap  to  a  signal.  Here,  as  time 
and  again  thereafter  at  Muslim  religious  scenes,  I  felt 
the  grip  of  the  will  of  the  crowd,  and  knew  practically 


Copyright,  Underwood  ir  Underwood,  N.  Y. 

Coffee  Picking  in  British  East  Africa 


EGYPT:    THE    LAND    WE    NOW    KNOW        105 

how  slight  a  touch  may  turn  and  sweep  a  great  concourse 
into  a  simultaneous  brain-storm."  *  Let  us  add  that  the 
stranger  who  is  permitted  to  witness  one  of  these  func- 
tions must  bear  himself  respectfully  and  refrain  from 
disparaging  remarks,  even  in  the  EngHsh  tongue. 

Rhamadan  is  the  name  given  to  the  ninth  month  of 
the  Mahometan  year,  and  if  perchance  it  falls  in  winter, 
the  tourist  season,  the  visitor  is  to  be  congratulated  and 
he  should  try  to  be  in  the  streets  at  nightfall  of  the 
first  day,  especially.  Every  Moslem  knows  just  when 
Rhamadan,  the  great  "fast"  month,  is  to  begin,  even 
if  the  lunar  calendar  (unlike  the  Chinese  calendar)  is 
without  any  intercalary  month  in  Mahometan  communi- 
ties to  adjust  occasionally,  although  only  approximately, 
the  divergence  from  the  Gregorian.  But  the  crescent 
moon  must  be  seen  by  the  "astronomer  royal"  at  Con- 
stantinople and  the  fact  telegraphed  to  Cairo  (note  the 
strange  commingling  of  mediaeval  chronology  and  modern 
science!)  before  the  cannon  on  the  citadel  can  announce 
that  the  celebration  may  oflScially  begin.  This  same 
fact  of  the  new  moon  being  seen  at  Constantinople  must 
be  notified  to  all  parts  of  the  Mahometan  world  that  are 
accessible  by  telegraph.  What  happens  when  clouds 
obscure  the  Constantinople  official's  vision,  deponent 
sayeth  not!  Every  good  Mussulman  keeps  strict  fast 
during  the  daytime  of  the  whole  of  Rhamadan,  even 
abstaining  from  tobacco;  and  the  careless  will  observe 
that  first  day,  even  if  they  are  not  very  strict  on  the 
others  of  the  great  fast.  But  after  sunset  the  fast 
gives  place  to  feasting  and  jollification  that  are  almost 
•"Aspects  of  Islam,"  D.  B.  Macdonald 


io6 


AFRICA    TO-DAY 


riotous,  and  then  all  places  of  entertainment  are  gaiety 
itself. 


t: 


^ 


t 


S 


m 


La      i  -    la 


ba 


la-1    -    lah 


La 


j"^,  j»-nte^ 


D.C. 


I 


la  -  ha  i  -  1  -  la  -  1  -  la  -  h        La    i  -  la  -  ha  il  -  la-1  lah. 

This  is  the  favourite  song  of  the  dervishes  during 
Rhamadan  (although  popular  at  all  times).  It  is  called 
a  zikr,  and  is  sung  by  a  group  of  perhaps  thirty,  more  or 
less,  seated  in  a  circle.  At  first  the  tempo  is  slow  and  the 
swaying  of  the  bodies,  backward  and  forward,  from  side 
to  side,  is  in  time  to  the  chant.  Gradually  the  move- 
ment quickens  and  erelong  passes  into  wild  frenzy;  not 
imfrequently  some  of  the  singers  collapse  in  an  epileptic 
fit.  The  general  effect  of  the  song  and  action  is  said  to 
be  strangely  erotic. 

If  the  opportunity  offers,  the  visitor  is  recommended 
to  see  a  marriage  procession  and  a  Mussulman  funeral, 
with  its  attendant  "professional  mourners,"  whose 
vociferous  lamentations,  but  perfunctory  to  the  verge  of 
the  ridiculous,  often  relieve  the  sorrow  of  those  whom 
we  should  expect  truly  to  lament,  so  that  the  "bereaved" 
friends  appear  to  be  rather  joyous  in  their  indifference. 
The  so-caUed  "Howling  Dervishes"  have  come  to  be 
so  very  professional  that  they  are  found  to  be  rather 
a  fake.  "On  the  birthday  of  the  Prophet,  for  example, 
there  is  a  great  festival  in  Cairo,  and  on  the  plain,  outside 
of  the  city  to  the  north,  tents  are  erected  in  which  the 


EGYPT:    THE    LAND    WE    NOW    KNOW        I07 

different  darwish  fraternities  hold  exhibitions.  For  this 
reason,  inasmuch  as  they  are  perfectly  open  to  the  pubHc 
and  inasmuch  as  the  public  passes  along  from  one  to 
another,  taking  up  stall  after  stall,  the  solemnity  and 
religious  reaUty  were  greatly  impaired.  It  was  evident 
to  me  what  must  have  been  the  effect  on  those  zikrs 
when  tourists  were  freely  admitted."  *  But  let  the 
unwary  tourist  be  careful  of  the  perfume  sellers,  who  can 
cleverly  palm  off  the  poorest  compounds  as  genuine 
"attar  of  roses,"  and  let  him  shun  the  itinerant  hawker 
of  antiques,  rugs,  etc. ;  even  the  alleged  reputable  dealers 
are  scarcely  trustworthy. 

If  the  traveller  must  of  necessity  turn  to  the  new  town 
for  the  physical  comforts  which  only  a  properly  con- 
ducted "European"  hotel  can  furnish,  it  is  to  the  old 
quarters  that  he  will  have  to  go  for  real  fascination. 
At  one  place  he  may  run  across  a  fortified  gateway,  at 
another  a  dilapidated  mosque  bearing  a  text  from  the 
Koran  in  the  quaint  old  Cufic  characters,  and  each  has 
its  history.  Perhaps  it  will  be  something  which,  when 
translated  by  the  guide  (if,  fortunately  yet  exceptionally, 
he  is  competent  to  do  this),  may  recall  the  story  of  Sala- 
dhin  as  he  went  forth  from  El-Kahira  (Magira-el-Qahira 
is  the  true  Arabic  name  for  Cairo)  to  meet  Richard  and 
his  crusaders  on  the  plains  of  Acre;  or  there  is  pretty 
sure  to  be  some  episode  that  will  bring  to  mind  the  good 
Haroun-al-Rashid,  who  has  just  arrived  from  Bagdad 
and  is  stealthily  pursuing  his  midnight  rambles. 

The  tourist  is  likely  to  take  at  least  one  trip  down  the 
Nile,  two  or  three  miles,  to  see  the  place  where  Napoleon 

*  D.  B.  Macdonald,  op.  cit. 


Io8  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

and  his  army,  near  the  Embabeh  end  of  the  railway 
bridge  on  the  Alexandria  line,  won  the  "Battle  of  the 
Pyramids";  his  European  tactics,  of  infantry  hollow 
squares  receiving  sternly  and  invincibly  the  wild  cavalry 
charges  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet,  completely  baffling 
the  Mamelukes.  This  visit  will  probably  lead  the  visitor 
to  recall  the  fact  that  it  was  Napoleon's  success  which 
led  to  the  beginnings  of  modern  Egyptian  research. 
Or  there  is  another  trip,  into  the  Land  of  Goshen, 
where  the  Children  of  Israel  so  long  sojourned,  which 
will  appeal  with  special  force  to  the  biblical  student. 
What  an  infinity  of  possibilities  for  every  class  of  visitors 
does  Cairo  offer!  Alexandria  and  Cairo  were  the  seat 
of  learning,  the  nursery  of  arts  and  sciences  from  which 
Greece  and  other  northern  lands  received  them,  and 
Egypt  was  Hkewise  the  granary  of  the  world.  It  is 
certain  that  the  plenty  or  scarcity  of  the  Roman  Empire 
depended  upon  a  good  or  a  bad  harvest  in  Egypt.  Its 
favourable  situation  for  commerce,  fronting  the  Medi- 
terranean and  bordering  on  the  Red  Sea,  wiU  again  — 
and  perhaps  before  long  —  reassert  itself. 

The  temptation  to  dwell  upon  some  political  aspects 
of  Egypt  to-day  must  be  resisted,  for  already  this 
chapter  is  too  long  and  we  should  now  be  journeying 
up  the  Nile.  But  we  cannot  refrain  from  saying  that 
since  France  withdrew,  in  1883,  from  sharing  with  Great 
Britain  in  the  control  of  Egyptian  finances  and  govern- 
ment, Egypt  has  been,  in  every  respect  save  the  name 
alone,  a  dependency  of  Great  Britain;  and  since  France 
has  been  seeking  the  consent  of  other  European  Powers 
to  her  exercise  of  controlling  rights  in  Morocco,  the 


EGYPT:    THE    LAND    WE    NOW    KNOW        IO9 

Sahara,  etc.,  this  British  suzerainty  has  been  more  effec- 
tive than  ever.  It  cannot  truthfully  be  denied  that  it 
is  for  the  good  of  the  whole  world  that  this  is  so.  If  the 
Young  Turks'  ambitions  take  the  course  of  attempting 
to  wrest  from  Great  Britain  this  control,  it  will  surely 
bring  about  nothing  but  disaster. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

TEE  NILE:   HISTORICAL,  LEGENDARY, 
PICTURESQUE 

IT  would  seem,  at  first  glance,  as  if  the  discovery  of 
the  Nile's  sources  in  Victoria  Nyanza  and  Albert 
Nyanza  had  solved  the  mystery  of  ages  and  proved 
that  Egypt  is  not  dependent  solely  upon  the  irrigation 
that  naturally  follows  the  rise  in  the  river  from  rainfall 
alone.  It  is  quite  true  that  "the  Nile  is  the  Life  of 
Egypt,"  but  if  the  stream  were  entirely  unaided  by  the 
art  of  man  —  in  conserving  the  supply,  constructing 
feed  canals,  etc.  —  it  would  never  sufficiently  overflow 
its  banks  to  inundate  (without  destructive  floods),  and 
by  that  same  reasonable  inundation  fertilise  the  whole 
of  the  arable  land  in  the  vaUey  and  in  the  Delta.  The 
two  great  rivers  from  Abyssinia  are  the  Blue  Nile  and 
the  Atbara  (called  by  the  natives  Bahr-el-Aswad,  "Black 
Nile")  which,  although  streams  of  great  size  while  in  the 
mountains  and  highlands  of  Abyssinia,  are  reduced  to 
insignificance  from  the  middle  of  June  until  September, 
or  during  the  dry  months.  Then,  the  water  supply 
from  Abyssinia  having  ceased,  Egypt  is  dependent 
entirely  upon  the  equatorial  lakes  and  the  affluents  of  the 
White  Nile  until  the  rainy  season  again  fills  the  Abys- 
sinian rivers;  so  that  it  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  these  rivers 
which  contribute  to  the  visitor's  pleasure. 


THE    NILE:    HISTORICALLY  III 

The  Nile  overflow  is  not  only  remarkably  regular  in 
its  annual  occurrence  as  a  means  of  irrigation,  but  the 
deposit  of  mud  which  it  spreads  over  the  fields  so  enriches 
the  soil  that  artificial  fertilisation  is  rarely  resorted  to. 
Baker,  the  great  discoverer  who  solved  "the  mystery 
of  ages,"  happily  describes  the  joint  action  of  the  rivers 
thus:  "The  equatorial  lakes  feed  Egypt,  but  the  Abys- 
sinian rivers  cause  the  inundation." 

Erastosthenes'  description  of  the  Nile  is  not  a  bad 
one  to  insert  here.  Briefly,  he  says  that  this  river  is 
distant  from  the  Arabian  Gulf  (Red  Sea)  towards  the 
west  one  thousand  stadia  *  and  resembles  the  letter  N 
reversed.  For  after  flowing  twenty-seven  hundred  stadia 
from  Meroe,  later  the  capital  of  Ethiopia,  it  turns  south 
and  to  the  winter  sunset,  when  it  is  almost  in  the  lati- 
tude of  the  places  about  Meroe,  thus  entering  far  into 
Africa;  and  having  made  another  bend,  it  flows  towards 
the  north  a  distance  of  fifty-three  hundred  stadia,  to  the 
great  cataract;  and  inchning  a  httle  to  the  east  traverses 
a  distance  of  twelve  hundred  stadia  to  the  smaller  cata- 
ract of  Syene  (Assouan),  and  thence  fifty- three  hundred 
stadia  to  the  sea.  The  figures  which  deal  with  the 
river's  length  are  palpably  mistakes;  for  it  has  been 
agreed  generally  that  day's  marches  were  converted  into 
stadia;  but  the  directions  are  fairly  accurate  and  indi- 
cate that  the  Nile  was  looked  upon  as  a  mighty  river. 

At  the  point  of  the  Delta,  just  north  of  Cairo,  it  was 
intended   to   construct   a   barrage   which,   by   crossing 

*  Erastosthenes'  stadium  was,  roughly,  five  hundred  and  twenty 
English  feet,  and  the  part  of  the  Nile  that  he  probably  knew  is  about 
ninety  miles,  at  an  average,  from  the  Red  Sea. 


112  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

both  branches  of  the  river,  was  to  regulate  the  munda- 
tion  above  and  below  that  point;  but  this  has  been 
supplanted  by  the  great  dam  at  Assouan  and  the  elabo- 
ration of  the  system  of  distributing  canals.  And  here 
it  is,  perhaps,  well  just  to  mention  the  tremendous 
undertaking  that  has  been  accomplished  by  British 
engineers,  although  anything  like  a  full  description  would 
be  out  of  place,  since  it  would  take  too  much  space  and 
for  such  a  technical  matter  reference  should  be  had  to 
the  work  of  a  speciahst.  Yet  something  may  be  said 
of  the  old,  native,  very  crude  way  of  watching  and,  to 
a  certain  extent,  regulating  the  overflow  of  the  coimtry. 
The  ancient  writers  tell  us,  and  their  accovmts  have 
been  remarkably  verified  by  later,  scientific  observers, 
that  the  river  commenced  to  rise  in  May,  but  that  not 
much  attention  was  paid  to  the  rise  until  somewhere 
about  the  end  of  June,  or  just  after  the  siunmer  solstice. 
We  may  interpolate  here  that  Egyptians  superstitiously 
connected  the  Sphinx  with  the  Nile's  overflow,  because 
those  great  figures  (particularly  that  one  near  the  pyra- 
mids of  Ghizeh),  with  the  head  of  a  woman  and  the 
body  of  a  lion,  symbolised  the  time  when  the  sun  passes 
through  the  constellations  Virgo  and  Leo,  thus  marking 
the  swelling  of  the  Nile  as  occurring  at  the  season  for 
which  the  Sphinx  seemed  to  stand. 

In  very  ancient  times  the  rise  was  watched  by  means 
of  pits  or  wells  sunk  at  places  sxifficiently  near  the  river- 
bank  to  make  sure  that  the  percolation  of  water  would 
be  free.  Later,  more  elaborate  nilometers  were  con- 
structed; one  of  these  was  a  large  reservoir  in  a  castle 
right  on  the  bank.    Round  this  reservoir  was  a  hand- 


Copyrignt.    Uruienvood  ^  Undemood,  X.  V. 

The  Great  Dam  across  the  Nile  at  Asslan,  Egypt 
Tbe  must  gigantic  masonry  o/  modern  times 


THE    NILE:    HISTORICALLY         II3 

some  gallery,  supported  by  twelve  marble  pillars,  joined 
at  their  tops  in  such  a  way  as  to  form  arches.  There 
was  a  balustrade  on  the  inner  side  of  the  gaUery  to  lean 
on  when  looking  down  at  the  water,  which  entered  the 
reservoir  and  passed  out  through  a  canal  cut  down  from 
the  river.  In  the  centre  of  the  basin  was  an  octagonal 
marble  shaft  divided  into  twenty-four  equal  sections, 
and  each  section  (save  one)  marked  off  into  smaU  spaces 
of  a  few  inches  each.  When  the  water  had  risen  to  some 
sixteen  or  eighteen  feet  in  depth,  public  criers  proclaimed 
the  fact  through  the  capital  and  other  cities  and  con- 
tinued their  proclamations  until  the  water  had  risen  to 
about  twenty-five  feet  or  a  little  more  (although  even 
a  little  over,  say  twenty-seven  feet,  was  approaching  the 
danger  point),  when  preparations  were  made  to  cut  the 
dam  of  the  Khalii,  or  great  canal  at  Bulak,  which  passed 
through  the  heart  of  Cairo,  during  low  water  being 
little  better  than  a  stinking  cesspool.  This  cutting 
of  the  dam  was  an  important  ceremony  inasmuch  as 
it  presaged  the  irrigation  and  fertilisation  of  the  whole 
agricultural  districts,  and  it  was  always  performed  with 
great  solemnity  in  the  presence  of  the  Governor  (Pasha), 
accompanied  by  all  his  high  ofl&cials,  and  attended  by  a 
vast  throng  of  people. 

We  are  told  that,  long  ago,  the  Egyptians  would,  at 
this  ceremony,  sacrifice  a  girl,  or  as  others  say  a  boy  and 
a  girl,  to  the  river  god  as  a  thank  offering  for  the  benefit 
he  was  about  to  confer  upon  them.  They  were  even- 
tually persuaded  to  give  up  this  inhuman  practice.  But 
legend  has  it  that  the  very  year  the  cruel  sacrifice  was 
discontinued  the  river  failed  to  reach  the  proper  height, 


114  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

and  when  it  seemed  as  if  this  misfortune  were  going  to 
occur  a  second  time,  that  is  in  the  following  year  because 
the  overflow  was  delayed,  the  people  began  to  murmur 
and  call  for  a  resumption  of  the  human  sacrifice,  fearing 
a  famine.  The  governor  thereupon  led  all  the  men  of 
the  city,  Arabs,  Turks,  Jews,  Christians,  to  a  mountain 
east  of  the  city,  and  after  a  pathetic  exhortation  he  bade 
them  all  pray  to  their  common  God  to  grant  His  mercy, 
and  in  this  intercession  they  passed  all  that  day  and  the 
succeeding  night.  Before  daybreak  the  next  morning 
some  women  came  hurrying  from  the  town  to  the  moun- 
tain top  bringing  the  glad  news  that  the  Nile  had  risen 
thirteen  feet  during  the  night  and  was  still  rising. 
Greatly  rejoicing  and  uniting  in  thanks  to  God  for  thus 
promptly  and  acceptably  answering  their  prayers,  the 
multitude  came  hastily  down  the  mountain,  and  when 
they  reached  the  bank  of  the  Khalii  canal,  they  built 
there  an  altar  ten  feet  high  on  which  they  heaped  flowers 
and  olive  branches  as  a  thank  offering.  This  was  re- 
peated year  after  year,  and  when  the  dam  was  broken 
down,  the  rush  of  water  carried  altar  and  flowers  away 
to  the  sea. 

The  absolute  importance  of  the  Nile  overflow  is  so 
fully  recognised  that  every  appliance  of  science  to  secure 
an  equable  distribution  of  the  water  was  adopted  as 
civilisation  developed  and  learning  broadened,  and  to- 
day there  is  nothing  within  the  ken  of  specialists  that  is 
not  done  to  further  and  extend  this  blessing  which  the 
"Life  of  Egypt"  brings  to  the  Egyptians,  as  the  tourist 
will  admit  when  he  sees  at  Assouan  the  result  of  engineers' 
efforts  to  "harness  the  Nile."      The  appointment  of 


THE    NILE:    HISTORICALLY  II5 

Field  Marshal  Lord  Kitchener  —  Kitchener  of  Khartum 
—  to  be  British  agent  ensures  the  broadening  and 
strengthening  of  Great  Britain's  influence  (we  might 
really  as  well  say  control)  in  Egypt,  and  his  appreciation 
of  the  fundamental  necessity  for  wisdom  in  controUing 
the  Nile  overflow  is  an  assurance  that  the  great  under- 
taking will  be  duly  administered.  What  is  more, 
although  outside  the  scope  of  this  chapter  and  in  antici- 
pation of  what  win  be  said  in  Chapter  XVII,  his  views 
as  to  the  importance  of  completing  the  Cape  to  Cairo 
Railway  promise  a  speedy  extension  of  that  work, 
until  North  and  South  Africa-  are  linked  together  by 
a  steel  band. 

Beginning  an  account  of  the  Nile  at  the  broad  base 
of  the  Delta,  where  its  many  streams  debouch  into  the 
Mediterranean,  there  are  the  two  great  branches,  the 
Rosetta  and  the  Damietta,  which  take  their  names  from 
the  important  cities  at  their  respective  mouths.  From 
these  main  stems  a  great  many  smaller  streams  and 
canals  meander  across  the  level  country  to  the  east  of 
Damietta,  to  the  west  of  Rosetta,  and  all  over  the  Delta 
between  these  two  arms  of  the  Nile.  But  Alexandria 
itself  is  not  on  any  stream,  for  it  stands  on  a  sandy  shelf 
inside  of  which  is  the  body  of  water  —  now  salt,  but 
originally  fresh  —  called  Lake  Mariut ;  yet  Alexandria 
is  connected  with  the  Nile  by  the  Mahmoodeyeh  canal 
from  the  Rosetta  River.  This  was  dug  by  Mehemet 
Ali  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  As  an 
example  of  crass  stupidity,  the  ultimate  effect  of  the  act 
recoiling  upon  the  perpetrators,  it  may  be  told  here  that 
in   1 801   the  British    thought  to  cut   off   Alexandria's 


Il6  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

supply  of  fresh  water  by  severing  the  narrow  neck  which 
separated  Lake  Mariut  (or  Mareotis)  from  the  sea.  The 
plan  was  futile,  for  the  sea  flowed  in  and  submerged  one 
hundred  thousand  acres  of  arable  land,  many  human  lives 
were  lost,  and  forty  villages  destroyed,  while  the  cli- 
mate of  Alexandria  was  prejudicially  affected  to  the  dis- 
comfiture of  the  British  when  they  eventually  acquired 
preponderating  influence.  Now,  with  the  irony  of  fate, 
EngUsh  pumps,  operated  by  a  staff  of  English  engineers, 
but  paid  from  the  Egyptian  treasury,  are  kept  busy 
returning  one  and  a  half  million  tons  of  salt  water  back 
into  the  Mediterranean  each  day,  and  the  damage 
wrought  a  century  ago  is  irreparable. 

When  approaching  Alexandria,  the  light-house  on 
the  island  of  Pharos  attracts  attention  because  it  is  the 
modem  successor  of  the  "Pharos"  of  antiquity,  prob- 
ably the  first  lighthouse  ever  erected  for  the  specific 
purpose  of  being  a  guide  to  mariners.  The  original 
was  built  by  Ptolemy  I,  Soter,  and  Ptolemy  II,  Phila- 
delphus,  in  the  third  century  B.C.  and  was  one  of  the 
Seven  Wonders  of  the  World.  There  formerly  stood 
at  Alexandria  two  objects  of  considerable  historic 
interest.  These  were  the  two  obelisks  of  pink  granite, 
known  as  ''Cleopatra's  Needles,"  which  were  brought 
from  Heliopolis  (modern  Matarieh,  on  the  Pelusiac 
branch  of  the  Nile,  latitude  30°  8'  N.),  a  distance 
considerably  greater  than  from  Cairo,  and  a  more  diffi- 
cult journey.  One  of  the  "Needles"  is  now  on  the 
Thames  embankment,  London,  and  the  other  is  in  Central 
Park,  New  York.  Another  object  of  interest  is  the 
beautiful  Corinthian  column,  ninety-nine  feet  tall,  which 


THE    NILE:    HISTORICALLY  II7 

bears  the  fanciful  name  of  "Pompey's  Pillar"  (because 
Pompey  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  it).  It  bears 
an  inscription  stating  that  it  was  erected  in  302  a.d. 
in  honour  of  Diocletian.  Before  leaving  Alexandria  we 
should  commend  the  wisdom  of  Alexander  the  Macedonian 
in  selecting  this  site  for  a  harbour,  west  of  the  Nile 
mouths,  because  the  current  sets  along  the  coast  from 
west  to  east  and  carries  the  silt  away  from  Alexandria, 
as  has  been  demonstrated  in  the  case  of  Port  Said,  where 
an  enormous  training-waU  is  not  sufl&cient  to  obviate 
the  constant  use  of  dredgers. 

Along  the  coast,  east  of  Alexandria,  the  first  place  of 
importance  is  Rasheed,  called  by  foreigners  Rosetta. 
It  would  seem  to  be  the  natural  deep-sea  port  for  Egypt, 
but  it  has  been  successfully  supplanted  by  Alexandria, 
and  since  the  opening  of  the  Suez  Canal,  Port  Said  and 
Ismalia  have  stiU  further  afifected  it.  But  we  must  not 
forget  to  mention  the  providential  Rosetta  stone.  "The 
name  is  given  to  a  stone  now  in  the  British  Museum, 
originally  found  by  French  soldiers  who  were  digging 
near  the  Rosetta  mouth  of  the  Nile.  It  is  a  piece  of 
black  basalt  and  contains  part  of  three  equivalent 
inscriptions,  the  first  or  highest  in  hieroglyphics,  the 
second  in  demotic  characters,  and  the  third  in  Greek. 
According  to  these  inscriptions,  the  stone  was  erected  in 
honour  of  Ptolemy  Epiphanes,  March  27,  B.C.  196. 
This  stone  is  famous  as  having  furnished  to  Young  and 
Champollion  the  first  key  to  the  interpretation  of  Eg}^)- 
tian  hieroglyphics.  In  its  present  broken  condition  it 
measures  three  feet  nine  inches  in  height,  two  feet  four 
and  a  half  inches  in  width,  and  eleven  inches  in  thick- 


Il8  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

ness."  *  The  story  of  the  discovery,  the  casual  first 
treatment,  the  subsequent  intense  and  close  study  from 
the  known  Greek  back  to  the  form  of  writing  which  was 
popular  with  the  common  people,  the  demotic  in  contra- 
distinction to  the  hieratic  (sacred),  and  from  this  back 
into  the  realm  of  the  hieroglyphics,  until  then  almost  a 
sealed  book,  is  intensely  interesting. 

Along  the  course  of  the  Rosetta,  in  the  Delta  proper, 
and  on  the  banks  of  the  Damietta,  there  are  many 
places  of  great  interest  to  the  historian  and  archaeologist, 
but  hardly  hkely  to  attract  the  ordinary  tourist,  although 
all  would  be  repaid  by  a  visit  to  the  town  of  Damietta 
itself  and  to  El-Mansoorah,  to  the  south  of  which  are 
the  remains  of  a  remarkable  temple  to  the  goddess  Isis. 
This  was  built  of  granite  brought  from  Syene  (modern 
Assouan)  a  distance  of  six  hundred  miles  up  the  river. 
This  fact,  taken  in  connection  with  the  further  one  of 
the  extreme  difficulty  those  old  stonecutters  and  masons 
must  have  had  in  working  such  hard  material,  justify  the 
statement  that  this  was  probably  one  of  the  most  costly 
temples  in  all  Egypt.  Southward  from  Damietta  and 
east  of  the  river  are  the  ruins  of  a  large  temple  which 
was  built  of  red  granite.  Here  was  held  the  festival  of 
the  goddess  Bast  or  Pasht  (Greek  Bubastis),  whose 
sacred  animal  was  the  cat.  Herodotus  considered  this 
festival  the  most  important  of  the  Egyptian  ceremonies. 

Cairo  is,  of  course,  the  point  of  departure  for  the  trip 
up  the  Nile,  and  there  are  several  ways  of  doing  it.  For 
the  tourist  who  is  limited  as  to  time,  or  somewhat  re- 
stricted in  the  matter  of  expenditure,  there  is  the  railway 

*  Century  Dictionary. 


THE    NILE:    HISTORICALLY  II9 

to  Assouan,  the  head  of  comfortable  na\igation,  and,  for 
the  present,  the  end  of  the  railway;  for  between  Assouan 
and  Wady  Haifa  the  mountains  close  in  upon  the  river 
and  make  railway  construction  somewhat  difficult. 
It  is,  however,  quite  possible  to  cover  the  intervening 
distance  by  boat,  so  that  the  tourist  may,  if  he  hkes,  go 
on  to  Wady  Haifa  and  there  take  the  train  again  for 
Khartum,  thus  passing  out  of  Egypt  into  Nubia.  By 
taking  the  railway  and  stopping  over  at  Karnak,  to  visit 
Thebes  and  Luxor,  the  traveller  will  get  a  satisfactory 
idea  of  the  Nile  Valley  and  a  glimpse  at  some  of  the 
most  celebrated  ruins,  and  at  Assouan  he  may  decide 
for  himself  how  much  more  he  will  do.  Thebes,  called 
afterwards  Diospolis  Magna,  or  the  City  of  Jupiter, 
once  stood  on  both  sides  of  the  river,  although  the  city 
proper  was  that  part  on  the  east  bank,  the  Libyan  suburb 
(Pathyris,  Memnonia)  being  on  the  west  bank.  The 
village  of  Luxor,  rich  in  archaeological  "finds,"  as  has 
been  already  indicated,  now  occupies  a  part  of  the  site 
of  Thebes.  The  city  was  deservedly  esteemed  to  be  one 
of  the  finest  in  the  world.  Homer  speaks  of  it  as  Heca- 
tomplos,  because  of  its  hundred  gates ;  other  authorities 
declare  there  were  not  that  many  gates  in  the  city  wall, 
but  that  there  were  many  temples  within  the  city  limits, 
that  most  of  them  had  large  porches  entered  through 
sumptuous  gateways,  and  these  gave  rise  to  the  use  of 
that  form  of  expression  which  employs  a  definite  number 
in  an  indefinite  sense. 

At  Assouan  the  first  cataract  ends.  It  was  not  a  very 
formidable  obstruction  to  navigation,  and  during  high 
water  could  be  ascended  without  much  trouble  in  the 


I20  AFRICATO-DAY 

ordinary  river  boats;  when  the  river  was  low  consider- 
able assistance  from  towers  was  necessary.  Since  the 
construction  of  the  great  dam,  a  canal  sixty-five  hundred 
and  forty  feet  long,  with  four  locks,  permits  mail  steamers 
and  other  vessels  to  pass  round  the  cataract  at  all  times. 
Some  of  the  earhest  travellers  in  Egypt  tell  of  what  they 
thought  was  a  surprising  spectacle,  and  it  may  possibly 
still  be  witnessed  at  the  upper  cataracts  if  one  cares  to 
see  it.  Two  of  the  natives  would  get  into  a  small  boat, 
one  to  guide  and  the  other  to  bale  out  the  water  that 
dashed  over  the  gunwale.  Having  borne  the  violence 
of  the  tossing  waters  for  some  time,  they  would  dexter- 
ously steer  the  boat  through  the  narrow  channels,  avoid- 
ing the  rocks  in  a  breath-taking  way,  and  let  themselves 
be  carried  down  by  the  falling  waters,  directing  the  little 
vessel  with  their  hands,  rushing  headlong,  and  plunging 
over  the  brink  to  the  great  terror  of  the  spectators,  who 
thought  them  utterly  lost  and  swallowed  up.  They 
appeared  again  on  the  water  below  the  cataract,  far 
from  the  place  where  they  fell,  as  if  they  had  been  shot 
out  of  a  gun.* 

For  those  tourists  who  are  not  hampered,  either  by 
time  or  purse,  there  are  the  Nile  River  steamboats, 
wherein  comfort  and  luxury  are  pleasingly  combined 
and,  aU  things  considered,  at  not  exceedingly  great 
expense.  However,  there  is  often  the  objection  raised  to 
this  mode  of  travel  that  the  "guide"  describes,  in  the 
truly  characteristic,  parrot-like  manner  of  his  kind, 
the  places  that  are  visited  or  passed,  and  tells  their 
history  in  a  way  that  too  frequently  conflicts  with  the 
*  Adapted  from  "An  Universal  History." 


THE    NILE:    HISTORICALLY  121 

narrative  given  by  recognised  authorities.  This  is  to  be 
expected. 

The  ideal  way  to  make  the  Nile  trip,  extended  on  to 
and  beyond  Khartum,  is  still  by  private  (that  is,  hired) 
dahabeeyah  —  excepting,  of  course,  the  private  steam- 
yacht;  although  this  latter  is  not  to  be  too  highly  recom- 
mended because  of  difficulties  that  are  raised  by  officials 
tied  up  into  hard,  unyielding  knots  by  yards  of  red  tape, 
and  the  not  unnatural  opposition  of  steamboat  com- 
panies and  proprietors  of  dahaheeyahs,  who  feel  their 
prerogatives  intruded  upon.  The  following  sketch  of 
the  trip  is  compiled  from  various  sources  and  is  con- 
densed to  suit  those  who  have  leisure  and  desire  to  see 
from  their  own  boat ;  although  much  that  is  said  applies 
equally  well  to  those  who  travel  by  the  steamboats. 

A  short  distance  above  Cairo  the  mountains  and 
desert  draw  in  close  on  the  west,  and  soon  the  site  of 
the  stone  quarries  is  seen,  especially  those  of  El-Masarah, 
from  which  were  taken,  as  tablets  in  situ  record,  the 
finer  blocks  of  limestone  built  into  the  pyramids  of 
Ghizeh.  The  foreshore  widens,  and  overlooking  the 
beautiful,  fertile  valley,  studded  with  villages  shaded 
by  many  palm  trees,  the  long  Une  of  the  pyramids  is 
seen  beyond.  A  divergence  may  be  made  into  the 
Fayum,  a  pear-shaped  tract  extending  over  thirty 
miles  into  the  desert.  Here  is  the  site  of  the  famous 
Labyrinth.  It  is  lamentable  that  this  wonderful  struc- 
ture is  now  such  a  hopeless  mass  of  ruins  that  nothing 
satisfactory  can  be  made  out  of  them,  although  the  plan 
may,  in  a  measure,  be  understood  even  at  present.  A 
few  remarks  are  borrowed  from  an  old  writer  as  being 


122  *  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

a  little  more  effective  than  the  bald  account  given  in 
our  works  of  reference.  It  was  designed  as  a  pantheon 
or  universal  temple  for  all  the  Egyptian  deities,  as  well 
as  to  be  a  meeting-place  of  the  magistrates  of  the  nation 
for  feasting  and  sacrifice.  Each  nome  was  represented 
by  a  delegate,  and  these,  collectively,  judged  causes  of 
great  importance. 

For  each  nome  there  was  a  hall.  Herodotus  says 
twelve,  for  Egypt  was,  in  his  time,  divided  into  that 
many  districts  or  prefectures;  Pliny  says  sixteen; 
Strabo,  twenty-seven.  The  first  says  these  halls  were 
vaulted  and  each  had  the  same  number  of  doors 
opposite  one  another,  six  opening  to  the  north  and 
six  to  the  south,  all  shut  oflf  by  the  same  outer  wall. 
There  were  three  thousand  apartments;  one-half  in  the 
lower  storey,  below  the  level  of  the  ground,  the  rest  in 
the  upper  storey.  Herodotus  saw  only  the  upper  ones, 
being  refused  admission  to  the  lower  on  account  of  their 
sanctity,  for  here  were  the  sepulchres  of  the  holy  croco- 
diles and  the  tombs  of  the  kings  who  had  built  the 
Labyrinth.  This  writer  declares  that  what  he  saw 
seemed  to  surpass  the  work  of  human  hands;  there  were 
so  many  ways  out  through  the  various  passages,  and 
there  were  such  infinite  returns  which  afi"orded  a  thousand 
occasions  for  wonder.  He  passed  through  spacious  halls 
into  grand  chambers;  thence  into  private  apartments; 
then  by  hallways  out  of  the  smaller  rooms  and  spacious 
chambers  into  still  grander  ones.  The  roofs  and  walls 
were  encrusted  with  marble,  and  on  the  latter  were 
sculptured  figures  also.  The  halls  were  surrounded  with 
pillars  of  polished  white  stone.    To  Herodotus'  descrip- 


Copyright,  Underwood  ir  Underwood,  X.  V. 

The  GROTTo-TuMin  n  en    Abi'  Simbel 
From  a  boat  on  tbe  Nile,  Egypt 


THE    NILE:    HISTORICALLY  123 

tion  others  add  that  the  Labyrinth  stood  in  an  immense 
square  surrounded  by  buildings  at  a  great  distance. 
The  porch  was  of  Parian  marble  and  there  were  other 
piUars  of  Cyene  marble.  Inside  were  temples  dedicated 
to  several  deities,  and  galleries  to  which  one  ascended 
by  ninety  steps;  these  were  adorned  with  columns  of 
porphyry,  images  of  the  gods,  and  statues  of  kings,  all  of 
monstrous  size.  The  passages  met  and  crossed  in  such 
an  intricate  manner  as  to  make  it  impossible  for  a  stranger 
to  find  his  way  without  a  guide. 

Still  farther  on  in  the  Fayum  may  be  traced  the 
remains  of  Lake  Moeris,  and  this  indicates  considerable 
skill  in  hydraulics  and  engineering.  It  was  an  artificial 
lake  the  water  of  which  was  intended  to  be  a  reservoir 
for  the  Nile's  excess  in  time  of  unusual  flood  and  to 
supplement  in  time  of  insufficiency.  There  is  every 
indication  of  a  much  greater  population  in  the  Fayum 
than  the  present  handful  of  peasants  and  labourers. 
This  fact  is  an  incentive  to  archaeologists  to  pursue 
investigations. 

Returning  to  the  Nile  proper,  and  continuing  to  ascend, 
it  is  soon  noticeable  that  the  mountains  on  the  east  now 
approach  so  close  to  the  river  that  at  times  there  is  not 
even  a  narrow  strip  of  arable  land,  while  towards  the 
west  the  valley  is  wider  than  before.  There  is  nothing 
of  special  interest  for  some  time  and  then  a  handsome 
mosque,  with  minarets  resembling  in  appearance  those 
of  the  mosque  of  Sultan  Hasan  at  Cairo,  is  seen.  Pres- 
ently the  river  touches  the  cUffs  of  Gebet  el-Teyr,  or 
"Mountain  of  the  Birds,"  on  the  summit  of  which  stood 
a  Coptic  convent  called  the  "Convent  of  the  Virgin." 


124  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

One  of  the  monks  used  to  descend  and  swim  off  to  pass- 
ing boats,  if  there  were  strangers  aboard,  asking  alms 
from  "fellow  Christians."  Many  sepulchral  grottoes 
are  noticed  in  the  face  of  the  eastern  mountains.  Those 
of  Beni-Hassan  are  as  beautiful  and  as  interesting  as 
any  in  Egypt;  they  stand  in  line  near  the  summit  of  the 
mountain  and  it  is  not  much  of  a  climb  to  reach  them. 
The  two  northernmost  are  remarkable  for  having  porti- 
coes, each  supported  by  two  polygonal  columns,  "of 
an  order  that  is  believed  to  be  the  prototype  of  the 
Doric."  Most  of  the  grottoes  are  adorned  with  sculp- 
tures and  paintings  which  pourtray  with  great  truthful- 
ness phases  of  life  in  the  time  when  they  were  done, 
long  ago;  for  these  grottoes  were  the  tombs  of  nomarchs 
and  other  governors  of  the  tweKth  dynasty  (about  2500 
B.C.).  The  paintings  are  said  to  be  surprisingly  fresh 
even  now.  These  are  certainly  appealing  places  which 
tempt  the  traveller  to  stop,  and  at  short  distances  there 
are  others;  for  example,  at  el-Ashmuneyn. 

Erelong  the  boat  is  opposite  Abydos,  on  the  border 
of  the  desert  here  separated  from  the  Nile  by  a  broad, 
cultivated  tract.  At  Abydos  was  found  the  famous  list 
of  Pharaohs,  known  as  "The  List  of  Abydos,"  one  of 
the  most  valuable  things,  connected  with  Egyptology, 
in  the  British  Museum.  After  the  discovery  of  that 
first  one,  M.  Mariette  found  a  corresponding  tablet  in 
another  temple  here,  which  fortunately  proved  to  be 
complete.  In  the  desert  near  by  are  many  tombs, 
remarkable  for  the  interesting  antiquities  discovered 
while  clearing  them  out.  Forty  miles  from  Abydos 
is  the   village   of  Dendereh.      Here  is  seen    the   first 


Copyright,  Underwood  It  Underwood,  ,V.  V. 

Hunting  rmc  Wild  Bull 
Depicted  on  temple  wall  of  Rameses  III,  Medine  Halm,  Tbebes 


THE    NILE:    HISTORICALLY  125 

well-preserved  and  imburied  temple  that  is  found  on 
the  voyage,  that  of  Athor,  the  Egyptian  Venus,  and  at 
this  place  the  tourist  is  almost  certain  to  tarry. 
Soon  after  leaving  Dendereh,  Thebes  is  reached.  Its 
monuments  do  not  show  at  a  distance  as  well  as  do 
those  of  Memphis;  they  stand  on  both  sides  of  the 
river,  which  here  has  for  a  few  miles  a  west  to  east 
course.  They  are  simply  indescribable  in  the  space 
here  available.  Possibly  the  names  Luxor  and  Karnak 
are  more  familiar,  and  the  Rameseum  will  hold  the 
attention,  as  will  the  Tombs  of  the  Kings.  From  Thebes 
to  the  beautiful  island  of  Philae,  beyond  the  proper  Hmits 
of  Egypt  (for  we  are  now  in  upper  Egypt),  there  is  but 
httle  to  hold  the  attention  of  any  but  the  enthusiastic 
specialist.  This  little  gem  of  an  island  is  only  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  long  and  five  hundred  feet  wide.  It  was 
highly  revered  by  the  ancient  Egyptians  because  it  was 
a  burialplace  of  Osiris.  The  great  temple  of  the  god 
stands  here,  the  portal  bearing  the  name  of  Nectanebes 
II,  but  the  wings  were  added  by  the  Ptolemies,  making 
the  entire  width  of  the  edifice  about  one  hundred  and 
twenty-two  feet. 

Assuming  that  the  tourist  will  wish  to  continue  his 
voyage  up  the  Nile,  and  this  is  not  impossible,  though 
not  altogether  easy  in  the  winter,  there  will  be  found 
some  very  exhilarating  scenery  between  Assouan  (already 
briefly,  but  sufficiently,  mentioned)  and  Wady  Haifa, 
just  above  which  place  is  the  second  cataract;  here  it 
will  be  remembered  a  railway  to  Khartum  was  opened 
in  1899.  One  hundred  miles  farther  up  the  river,  at 
Hannek,  is  the  third  cataract.    Just  below  Sehni,  two 


126  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

hundred  and  thirty  miles  from  Hannek,  is  the  fourth, 
and  forty  miles  below  Berber  is  the  fifth,  the  highest. 
From  this  point  on  to  where  the  Atbara  River  comes  in 
from  the  east  the  river  is  navigable,  flowing  through  the 
Nubian  Desert.  Two  hundred  miles  above  the  junction 
is  Khartum,  concerning  which  place  something  will  be 
said  in  the  next  chapter.  At  Khartum  the  White  Nile 
is  joined  by  its  largest  eastern  tributary,  the  Blue  Nile, 
that  drains  an  enormous  territory.  Some  three  hundred 
miles  still  farther  is  Fashoda,  and  sixty  miles  beyond, 
Sobat.  All  along  here  the  river  flows  through  a  great 
plain,  often  as  flat  as  a  floor,  stretching  from  spurs  of 
the  Abyssinia  highlands  on  the  east,  far  away  to  the 
hilly  districts  of  Taghala  and  Kordofan  on  the  west. 
But  a  little  farther  and  the  stranger  is  in  one  of  the 
many  spots  of  Africa  which  still  possess  attraction  for 
those  who  wish  to  explore  some  of  the  numerous  tracts 
that  are  not  perfectly  drawn  on  our  maps. 


CHAPTER  DC 

CENTRAL  AFRICA 

TF  we  consider  this  section  as  being  that  part  of  the 
-*•  continent  bounded,  speaking  without  much  pretence 
at  geographical  accuracy,  by  the  Sahara  and  Libyan 
deserts  on  the  north;  the  Red  Sea,  Abyssinia,  British 
East  Africa,  and  German  East  Africa  on  the  east;  British 
South  Africa  (as  including  Rhodesia)  on  the  south,  and 
the  several  Atlantic  Coast  States  on  the  west,  we  shall 
then  have  left  for  discussion  the  two  parts  of  the  Sudan 
(the  Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan  and  the  French  Sudan)  and 
what  was  called  for  some  time  the  Kongo  Free  State. 
The  Sudan  has  an  ethnological  rather  than  a  physical 
unity,  and  politically  it  is  now  cut  up  into  a  large  number 
of  sections,  all  under  the  control  of  European  Powers, 
and  not  yet  brought  into  that  condition  of  peaceful  recog- 
nition of  authority  which  is  to  be  desired.  This  territory 
is,  in  very  truth,  the  Heart  of  the  Dark  Continent,  and 
it  is  not  yet  thoroughly  well  known,  although  there  is 
quite  enough  of  interest  to  say  about  it  to  hold  the  atten- 
tion for  a  few  minutes.  The  Arabs  called  this  region 
Bilad  es-Sudan,  the  "Country  of  the  Blacks,"  and  the 
natural  inference  is  that  the  aborigines,  as  well  as  the 
people  stiU  farther  south,  were  Negroes;  but  it  will  be 
shown,  we  think,  when  we  come  to  discuss  the  Blacks 
of  Africa,  in  Chapter  XIII,  that  very  few  of  the  original 
inhabitants  were  of  pure  negro  blood. 

127 


128  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

From  all  sides,  as  one  enters  the  Sudan,  the  impression 
produced  by  the  appearance  of  the  country,  "a  moder- 
ately elevated  region,  diversified  with  extensive  open  or 
rolling  plains,  level  plateaus,  and  even  true  highlands, 
especially  in  the  southwest,"  is  likely  to  be  pleasing; 
but  of  course  the  transition  on  the  north  from  the  barren 
desert,  whether  abrupt,  as  is  frequently  the  case,  or 
gradual,  as  has  been  shown  to  be  the  case  sometimes,  is 
most  refreshing.  Yet  the  climate  of  the  Sudan  is  truly 
tropical,  although  not  necessarily  imhealthy,  save  in  the 
low  lands  along  the  rivers,  which  are  almost  fatal  to 
Europeans.  There  are  two  distinctly  marked  seasons; 
a  rainy  one,  from  April  or  May  to  October,  during  which 
the  temperature  is  high  and  the  humidity  trying,  the 
rest  of  the  year  being  dry  and  warm.  The  country  is 
noted  for  terrific  thunderstorms  and  torrential  down- 
pours which  often  cause  devastating  floods.  Lake  Chad, 
almost  at  the  exact  central  point  of  the  northern  boun- 
dary of  the  Sudan,  has  been  described  as  being  in  a 
landlocked  basin;  but  if  we  may  accept  the  account  of 
an  expedition  made  in  the  autumn  of  1910,  this  descrip- 
tion must  be  amended.  In  March,  191 1,  there  was 
printed  in  the  London  Times  a  synopsis  of  a  pilgrimage 
made  by  Miss  Olive  Mac  Leod  to  the  grave  of  her  lover, 
Lieut.  Boyd  Alexander,  who  was  killed  by  the  natives  in 
the  French  Sudan.  The  party  left  the  town  of  Fuh, 
intending  to  reach,  if  possible,  the  falls  of  the  Mao  Kabi 
River  in  French  Equatorial  Africa.  According  to  local 
legend,  these  falls  had  never,  until  that  time,  been  seen 
by  human  beings.  They  were  said  to  be  defended  from 
curious  natives  by  fearful  devils  who  resented  intrusion, 


CENTRAL    AFRICA  129 

and  from  inquisitive  Europeans  by  immense  herds  of 
giraffes  under  magic  spell  who  would  show  themselves 
and  thus  lure  away  the  strangers  from  the  holy  spot. 
The  Mao  Kabi  River  was  reached  in  October;  its  valley 
was  thickly  covered  with  lush  grass  and  unusually  thick 
brush  for  that  part  of  the  country,  but  it  was  also  strewn 
with  great  stones  and  masses  of  rock,  hidden  by  the 
undergrowth,  that  made  progress  difficult.  Along  tribu- 
tary streams  the  banks  were  granite  walls  and  the 
streams  a  succession  of  rapids,  the  current  running  about 
ten  miles  an  hour,  forming  cascades  and  long  series  of 
falls.  These  were  separated  from  one  another  and  from 
the  Mao  Kabi  itself,  which  bends  sharply  at  that  place, 
making  a  great,  glistening  St.  Andrew's  Cross.  Retrac- 
ing their  course,  the  party  reached  a  lower  level  and  at 
last  came  to  a  place  where  the  whole  river  shdes  over  a 
precipice  sixty  feet  high.  The  roar  was  deafening  because 
of  the  reverberation  from  the  almost  perpendicular  walls 
of  the  narrow  canyon.  They  reached  a  point  jutting 
out  over  the  water  and  took  photographs.  The  scene 
was  grand.  At  the  place  where  the  spray  rose  from  the 
bottom  of  the  falls  there  was  an  elliptical  rainbow  about 
two  hundred  feet  in  diameter.  It  is  claimed  by  the 
members  of  this  party  that  these  falls  are  of  consider- 
able importance  as  they  form  the  main  obstacle  to  a 
navigable  waterway  from  the  ocean  to  Lake  Chad.  This 
claim  requires  further  verification.  Captain  Lenfant  is 
reported  to  have  had  a  distant  view  of  these  falls  during 
his  expedition  into  the  same  country  a  few  years  ago.* 
While  there  is  a  large  number  of  political  divisions 
*  See  Report  of  P.  A.  Talbot,  Asst.  Dist.  Cominr.,  Southern  Nigeria. 


130  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

in  this  Central  Africa,  some  of  them  important  states 
but  most  of  them  petty  village  communities,  yet  the 
Sudan  so  nearly  embraces  all  that  it  is  quite  sufficient 
to  speak  of  that  territory,  drawing  precise  statements 
and  statistics  from  the  tenth  edition  of  the  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica,  "The  Sudan,"  an  important  speciaUsed  work 
published  in  London,  and  other  sources  that  are  rec- 
ognised authorities,  to  supplement  our  own  information. 
It  has  been  the  custom  to  speak  of  Eastern,  Central,  West- 
ern Sudan,  of  Egyptian  Sudan,  or  French  Sudan,  and 
probably  this  will  continue  for  some  time;  but  as  a  matter 
of  fact  all  these  terms  have  no  real  political  meaning  at 
all.  In  a  rough  and  ready  sort  of  way  the  various 
divisions,  large  and  small  and  using  the  old  native  names, 
may  be  segregated  thus:  first  group,  those  in  the  upper 
Nile  Valley,  embracing  the  territory  reconquered  by 
the  Egyptians,  ^vith  material  British  assistance  in  men 
and  means,  during  the  last  part  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, and  now  under  the  joint  control  of  Great  Britain 
and  Egypt.  This  group  of  states  is  now  known  officially 
as  the  Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan.  The  second  group 
includes  the  Sultanate  of  Bagirmi,  with  Kanem  and 
Wadai,  the  latter  being  the  last  to  yield  to  European 
control,  its  conquest  having  been  effected  only  in  1909. 
This  group  is  now  included  in  the  French  Kongo.  The 
third  group  is  almost  wholly  included  in  the  British 
Northern  Nigeria  Protectorate.  It  embraces  Sokoto, 
formerly  an  independent  Sultanate,  and  its  dependencies 
the  emirates  of  Kano,  Bida,  Zaria,  and  some  other  insig- 
nificant domains,  as  well  as  another  old  Sultanate, 
Bornu,  which  partly  comes  within  the  lines  of  the  German 


CENTRAL    AFRICA  I3I 

colony  of  the  Kameruns;  and  the  same  thing  must  be 
said  of  Adamawa.  The  fourth  group  includes  all  the 
native  states  of  Bondu,  Futa  Jallon,  Massina,  Mossi, 
and  the  district  within  the  great  bend  of  the  Niger  River. 
During  the  latter  part  of  the  last  century  France  gained 
control  of  aU  this  territory  and  gave  it  the  name  of  the 
French  Sudan,  but  in  1900  the  oflScial  title  was  changed 
and  now  practically  all  of  it  is  divided  between  the  two 
colonies,  the  Upper  Senegal  and  the  Niger, 

It  was  Mungo  Park  who  first  made  Europe  acquainted 
with  the  western  part  of  this  great  Central  Africa, 
although  he  was  not  the  first  traveller  there,  for  he 
visited  it  between  1795  and  1797,  and  again  in  1805.  He 
kept  a  careful  journal,  pubUshed  after  his  death,  but  in 
his  account  of  explorations  there  is  not  so  much  of  ethno- 
logical value  as  of  physical  difficulties,  sometimes  over- 
come, but  too  frequently  overwhelming,  and  of  personal 
discomfort — aU  going  to  prove  that  African  exploration 
was  then  a  more  serious  matter  than  it  is  now.  We  note 
with  some  amusement,  because  of  later  knowledge,  of 
course,  Park's  surprise  at  hearing  the  native  Blacks 
chanting  the  Moslem  La  illah  el  allah  Muhammad  rasowl 
allahi,  "There  is  no  God  but  Allah  and  Mohammed  is 
his  Prophet."  But  we  approve  his  praise  for  the  Man- 
dingo  negro's  maternal  affection,  who  exclaimed,  "Strike 
me,  but  do  not  curse  my  mother!"  because  fanatical 
Mohammedanism,  almost  exceeding  that  of  the  Mecca- 
ites,  and  allegiance  to  his  mother  are  still  conspicuous 
traits.  Ever  since  Park's  time,  as  was  the  case  then, 
the  natives  of  this  section  have  been  astonished,  mysti- 
fied even,  at  the  avidity  of  Europeans  for  ivory;  and  it 


132  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

is  probably  true  now,  as  it  certainly  was  then,  if  we 
could  but  get  at  the  truth,  that  they  thought  the  strangers 
believed  the  elephant's  tusks  to  be  endowed  with  some 
magical  and  potent  power. 

We  have,  as  yet,  singularly  Uttle  information  as  to 
social  and  economical  conditions  in  Katanga,  the  lofty, 
southeastern  corner  of  the  Belgian  Kongo;  of  unsavoury 
reputation,  however.  It  is  rich  in  minerals,  we  know, 
and  because  of  its  proximity  to  Rhodesia  and  its  compara- 
tively healthy  climate,  it  bids  fair  to  prove  —  both 
industrially  and  pohtically  —  a  second  Rand  in  the  not 
distant  future,  if  only  its  administration  can  be  ordered 
along  wise  and  humane  lines  and  entrusted  to  strong  and 
competent  hands.  There  was  pubHshed  in  191 1,  by  the 
Solway  Institute  of  Sociology,  in  Brussels,  a  report  on 
the  Upper  Katanga  which  gave  a  thoroughly  scientific, 
and  therefore  dispassionate,  account  of  the  economic 
conditions  which  existed  there  at  the  end  of  19 10  and 
which,  owing  to  the  special  qualifications  of  its  author. 
Professor  G.  de  Leener,  is  well  worthy  of  receiving  careful 
attention.  Rhodesia,  because  of  its  geographical  prox- 
imity and  through  the  enterprise  of  its  British  population, 
has  secured  a  practical  monopoly  of  the  trade  of  Upper 
Katanga,  and  it  means  to  keep  it.  Owing  to  reluctance 
on  the  part  of  the  Belgian  exporters  to  adapt  themselves 
to  the  established  requirements  as  to  packing,  shipping, 
etc.,  the  granting  of  credit,  and  other  factors  necessary  if 
a  trader  is  to  be  successful  in  that  particular  country 
or,  as  a  rule,  in  any  recently  opened  section,  and  also 
because  of  the  further  fact  that  there  is  not  a  single 
Belgian  engaged  in  trade  in  either  Rhodesia  or  Mozam- 


CENTRAL    AFRICA  133 

bique  (there  appeared  to  be,  at  the  time  this  report 
was  written,  only  one  Belgian  in  the  Upper  Katanga 
with  a  store  of  his  own),  practically  the  whole  trade 
depends  upon  the  activity  of  British  houses,  and  this 
naturally  entails,  in  its  turn,  the  use  of  the  EngUsh  lan- 
guage and  of  English  currency. 

The  failure  on  the  part  of  the  Belgian  merchants  is 
attributed  largely  to  over-centralisation  in  all  things 
Belgian,  and  Professor  de  Leener  expressed  the  opinion 
that  his  countrymen  are  temperamentally  ill-adapted 
to  successful  colonisation.  Belgians  do  not  take  even 
reasonable  chances  in  commercial  exploitation;  they 
have  not  the  capacity  or  inclination  to  turn  their  hand 
to  any  and  every  kind  of  work.  There  are  two  valu- 
able warnings  to  be  taken  from  the  professor's  paper, 
and  these  may  well  be  carefully  noted  by  Americans 
who  are  looking  towards  Africa  or  any  foreign  land: 
first,  against  paying  people  to  emigrate  who  have  not 
the  natural  inclination  to  do  so  without  receiving  any 
bonus,  and  second,  against  supposing  that  the  type  of 
man  who  may  be  good  enough  for  the  easy-going, 
secluded  existence  of  the  Lower  Kongo  is  Ukely  to  be 
able  to  adapt  himself  to  the  needs  of  social,  commercial, 
or  industrial  life  as  it  is  understood  by  the  pushing, 
keen  Briton  in  South  Africa. 

However,  in  western  and  central  Sudan  there  is  just 
now  little  to  hold  the  attention  except  in  commercial 
and  industrial  matters,  and  these  are  in  the  control  of 
Europeans,  so  that  there  is  not  much  opening  for  Ameri- 
can enterprise.  The  country  possesses  no  such  wealth  of 
ethnological  and  archaeological  material  as  does  eastern 


134  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Sudan,  and  therefore  we  shall  proceed  to  discuss  that 
section.  It  was  not  through  easy  conquest  that  the 
revolt  of  the  tribes  of  the  Egyptian  Sudan  who  had 
yielded  to  the  religious  and  poUtical  domination  of  the 
Arabian  civilisation  was  overcome  and  the  territory 
reconquered  by  the  Anglo-Egyptian  expedition  of  1896- 
1898.  It  was  a  serious  problem  to  solve  which  was 
offered  by  the  uprising  of  the  Mahdi  (the  "well- 
guided,"  that  spiritual  leader  who,  according  to  Moslem 
belief,  is  to  appear  on  earth  during  the  last  days  of  this 
world  and  lead  the  Mussulmans  to  world-wide  victory 
at  the  point  of  the  sword),  Mahommed  Ahmed,  in  1881- 
1884  and  the  consequences  that  flowed  therefrom. 

In  Mr.  Steevens'  book,  "With  Kitchener  to  Khar- 
tum," we  read  this:  "And  the  Dervishes?  The  honour 
of  the  fight  must  still  go  with  the  men  who  died.  Our 
men  were  perfect,  but  the  Dervishes  were  superb, 
beyond  perfection.  It  was  their  largest,  best,  and 
bravest  army  that  ever  fought  against  us  for  Mah- 
dism,  and  it  died  worthily  of  the  huge  empire  that 
Mahdism  won  and  kept  so  long.  Their  riflemen, 
mangled  by  every  kind  of  death  and  torment  that 
man  can  devise,  clung  round  the  black  flag  and  the 
green,  emptying  their  poor  rotten  home-made  car- 
tridges dauntlessly.  Their  spearmen  charged  death 
every  moment  hopelessly.  Their  horsemen  led  each 
attack,  riding  into  bullets  till  nothing  was  left.  .  .  . 
Not  one  such,  or  two,  or  ten,  but  rush  on  rush,  com- 
pany on  company  never  stopping,  though  all  their 
view  that  was  not  unshaken  enemy,  was  the  bodies 
of  the  men  who  had  rushed  before  them.    A  dusky  line 


CENTRAL    AFRICA  135 

got  up  and  stormed  forward,  it  bent,  broke  up,  fell  apart, 
and  disappeared.  Before  the  smoke  had  cleared  another 
line  was  bending  and  storming  forward  in  the  same 
track.  .  .  .  From  the  green  army  there  now  came 
only  death-enamoured  desperadoes,  strolling  one  by  one 
towards  the  rifles,  pausing  to  shake  a  spear,  turning  aside 
to  recognise  a  corpse,  then,  caught  by  a  sudden  jet  of 
fury,  bounding  forward,  checking,  sinking  Hmply  to  the 
ground.  Now  under  the  black  flag  in  a  ring  of  bodies 
stood  only  three  men,  facing  the  three  thousand  of  the 
Third  Brigade.  They  folded  their  arms  about  the  staff 
and  gazed  steadily  forward.  Two  fell.  The  last  Der- 
vish stood  up  and  filled  his  chest;  he  shouted  the  name 
of  his  Gk)d  and  hurled  his  spear.  Then  he  stood  quite 
still,  waiting.  It  took  him  full;  he  quivered,  gave  at 
the  knees,  and  toppled  with  his  head  on  his  arms  and  his 
face  towards  the  legions  of  his  conquerors." 

Commenting  upon  this,  Mr.  Norman  Angell,  in 
''The  Great  Illusion,"  says:  "Let  us  be  honest.  Is 
there  anything  in  European  history  —  Cambronne,  the 
Light  Brigade,  anything  you  hke  —  more  magnificent 
than  this?  If  we  are  honest  we  shall  say  no.  But 
note  what  follows  in  Mr.  Steevens'  narrative.  What 
sort  of  nature  should  we  expect  those  savage  heroes  to 
display?  Cruel,  perhaps,  but  at  least  loyal.  They 
will  stand  by  their  chief.  Men  who  can  die  like  that 
will  not  betray  him  for  gain.  They  are  uncorrupted 
by  commerciaUsm.  Well,  a  few  chapters  after  the 
scene  just  described,  one  may  read  this:  'As  a  ruler 
the  Khalifa  finished  when  he  rode  out  of  Omdurman. 
His  own  pampered  Baggara  horsemen  killed  his  men 


136  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

and  looted  his  cattle  that  were  to  feed  them.  Some- 
body betrayed  the  position  of  the  reserve  camels.  .  .  . 
His  followers  took  to  killing  one  another.  .  .  .  The 
whole  population  of  the  Khalifa's  capital  was  now 
ready  to  pilfer  the  Khalifa's  grain.  .  .  .  Wonderful 
workings  of  the  savage  mind!  Six  hours  before  they 
were  dying  in  regiments  for  their  master;  now  they  were 
looting  his  corn.  Six  hours  before  they  were  slashing 
our  wounded  to  pieces;  now  they  were  asking  us  for 
coppers.'  "  It  is  well  for  Africa,  for  the  whole  world, 
that  such  people  have  been  brought  under  firm,  consid- 
erate control. 

The  limits  of  this  joint  administration  (joint  in 
name  rather  than  as  a  pohtical  fact),  now  called 
Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan,  are  not  precisely  the  same  as 
were  those  of  the  States  which  were  formerly  included. 
The  line  between  it  and  Egypt  is  now  defined  at  22° 
north  latitude,  the  Egypt-Nubia  boundary;  then,  going 
on  round  the  compass  towards  the  east,  the  Red  Sea, 
Eritrea,  Abyssinia,  Uganda  Protectorate,  Belgian  Kongo, 
French  Kongo.  North  of  Darfur  the  western  and  the 
northern  boundaries  are  supposed  to  meet,  but  the  line 
is  absolutely  indefinite.  According  to  the  Turkish 
firman,  issued  in  1841,  a  semicircle,  convex  towards  the 
north,  from  the  Siwa  Oasis  to  Wadai,  and  cutting  the 
Nile  between  the  second  and  third  cataracts,  was  to  be 
the  frontier;  but  that  line  is  disregarded  by  the  Sudan- 
ese government.  This  Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan,  as  will 
be  understood  by  a  glance  at  a  map,  is  a  compact  terri- 
tory which  brings  the  whole  Nile  Valley,  from  the  lakes 
to  the  Mediterranean,  under  the  control  of  Great  Britain. 


Copyright,  Underwood  cr  Underwood,  .V.  I' 

The  Bealtifll  VVatek  Fkont  and  Harbour  of  Zanzibar 
British,  French,  and  other  steamers  call  here  regularly 


CENTRAL    AFRICA  I37 

It  is  a  country  about  one-fourth  the  size  of  Europe, 
being  about  nine  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  square 
miles  in  area.  From  south  to  north  it  is  traversed  by 
the  Nile,  and  all  the  great  tributaries  of  that  river  are 
partially  or  entirely  within  its  borders;  and  between  the 
southern  border  of  Uganda  and  the  northern  line  of  Rho- 
desia, along  both  sides  of  Lake  Tanganyika,  is  the  only 
stretch  of  the  whole  band  through  which  is  to  pass  the 
Cape  to  Cairo  Railway  that  Great  Britain  does  not  now 
control. 

The  most  elevated  portion  of  Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan 
is  a  range  of  low  mountains  —  really  Httle  more  than  hills 
as  seen  from  the  Red  Sea  —  parallel  with  the  sea  and 
rather  close  to  it.  Between  the  coast  and  the  Nile  is 
the  Nubian  desert,  a  rugged,  rocky,  barren  waste,  with 
here  and  there  a  Uttle  scanty  vegetation  in  the  wadies. 
But  within  the  triangle  formed  by  the  Nile,  the  Atbara, 
and  the  Blue  Nile,  the  so-called  Island  of  Meroe,  the 
soil  is  very  fertile,  and  here  the  rich  land  alternates 
between  rolling  open  ground  and  forests  wherein  is  but 
little  undergrowth.  The  desert  stretches  well  down 
into  the  Sudan  on  the  west  of  the  Nile,  much  farther 
than  on  the  east.  The  northern  part  of  Kordofan, 
which  Ues  between  the  desert  and  the  plains  of  Bahr  el- 
Ghazal  (the  important  western  tributary  of  the  Nile),  is 
barren  steppes,  but  south  of  the  tenth  parallel  of  lati- 
tude there  is  plenty  of  water  everywhere.  In  the  high- 
lands of  this  region  the  climate  is  healthy  because  of  its 
dryness. 

There  are  literally  but  few  people  living  in  the  desert, 
and  even  in  the  fertile  districts  the  population  is  not  now 


138  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

great,  for  the  former  inhabitants  suffered  much  from 
disease  and  war  during  the  Mahdi  regime.  The  popu- 
lation is  increasing  slowly  and  there  are  some  Europeans, 
mostly  Greeks,  going  into  this  region.  It  is  not  quite 
correct  now  to  apply  the  term  Bilad  es-Siidan  to  the 
Anglo-Egyptian  domains,  for  the  people  in  the  north  are 
Hamitic  or  Semitic  and  there  are  many  nomads  who 
are  classed  as  Arabs.  North  of  Khartum  is  found  a 
great  mixture  of  blood,  especially  among  the  Nubians. 
North  of  the  twelfth  parallel  the  inhabitants  are  almost 
altogether  of  mixed  Arab  descent;  in  Dafur  they  are 
Arab  and  Negro.  Those  who  may  be  called  true  negroes 
are  from  the  Nilotic  tribes;  there  are  several  strains  to 
be  detected  and  great  variation  in  physique  and  colour. 
A  marked  contrast  is  to  be  noted  between  the  industry 
of  the  Europeans  and  the  easy-going  manner  —  not  to 
say  laziness  —  of  the  native  Sudanese.  British  firmness 
has  effectually  put  a  stop  to  the  capture  of  slaves,  and 
that  trafiic  has  ceased;  but  domestic  slavery  continues. 
This  probably  is  a  survival  of  old  custom,  when,  as  a 
result  of  famine,  men  and  women  sell  themselves  to 
obtain  food  for  themselves  and  their  families,  or  through 
insolvency,  and  possibly  as  punishment  for  serious  crimes. 
The  treatment  of  these  slaves  is  not  now  marked  by 
cruelty. 

In  the  northeastern  parts  of  Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan 
facilities  for  travel  are  now  fairly  adequate  —  north 
of  Khartum  by  railway,  south  of  that  place  by  train 
and  steamboats,  or  by  caravan  where  modern  con- 
veniences have  not  yet  been  installed.  There  are 
two  principal  lines  of  railway;  the  one  connects  the 


CENTRAL    AFRICA  I39 

Sudan  with  northern  Egypt,  the  other  goes  to  the'  Red 
Sea.  The  first  follows  the  east  bank  of  the  Nile  to  Abu 
Hamed,  then  goes  straight  across  country  to  Wady 
Haifa,  thence  by  steamboat  to  Assouan,  at  which  place 
connection  is  made  with  trains  for  Cairo  and  Alexandria. 
At  Kiiartum  the  line  crosses  the  Blue  Nile  by  a  bridge 
and  follows  up  the  valley  to  Geteinah  (Gezira)  and 
Sennar,  turns  west  into  the  White  Nile  Valley,  crosses 
that  stream,  by  bridge,  near  Adlar  (Abba)  Island,  and 
continues  on  to  El  Obeid,  the  principal  town  of  Kordofan. 
It  was  near  this  place  that  the  Mahdists  overwhelmed 
Hicks  Pasha's  army,  and  for  a  time  thereafter  the  trade 
of  the  whole  province  was  diverted  towards  the  north; 
but  it  is  now  finding  its  way  back  into  Egypt.  The 
second  important  railway  leaves  the  trunk  line  at  Atbara 
Junction,  near  the  confluence  of  the  Nile  and  Atbara 
Rivers,  and  goes  east  via  Berber  and  the  old  Berber- 
Suakin  caravan  route.  It  forks  at  Sallom,  one  branch 
going  on  to  Suakin,  the  other  to  Port  Sudan,  a  newly 
established  harbour  on  the  Red  Sea  by  rail  from  Khartum 
493  miles,  while  Suakin  is  497  miles  from  Khartum. 

There  is  another  Hne  from  Abu  Hamed  to  Kareima 
(opposite  Merawei)  in  the  Dongola  district,  below  the 
fourth  cataract.  The  short  railway  from  Wady  Haifa 
along  the  bank  of  the  Nile  to  Kerma  was  abandoned  in 
1903,  and  connection  with  the  Assouan-Cairo  line  is  for 
the  present  made  by  steamer.  The  total  distance  from 
Khartum  to  Alexandria,  rail  and  boat,  is  very  nearly 
fifteen  hundred  miles,  or  more  than  one-quarter  of  the 
entire  length  of  the  Cape  to  Cairo  Railway.  There  are 
river  steamers  also  between  Kerma  and  Kareima,  and 


I40  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

above  IChartum  the  Government  maintains  a  regular 
steamboat  service  to  Gondakoro  in  the  Uganda  Pro- 
tectorate. When  high  water  permits,  boats  also  run  for 
some  distance  up  the  Blue  Nile,  but  powerful  dredgers 
and  machines  to  cut  the  masses  of  reeds,  grass,  trees, 
etc.,  which  accumulate  to  form  awkward  obstructions 
(called  Sudd),  are  required  constantly  to  keep  open  the 
fairway  in  the  Upper  Nile  and  Bahr  el-Ghazal.  The 
old  caravan  routes  Korosko-Abu  Hamed  and  Berber- 
Suakin  have  been  superseded  by  railways,  but  else- 
where wells  and  rest-houses  are  kept  up  along  others 
of  these  roads  which  lead  from  interior  towns  to  the 
Nile;  and  on  some  of  the  thoroughfares  regular  motor- 
car service  is  maintained,  removing  some  part  of  the 
stigma  of  being  antiquated. 

Durra  is  the  chief  grain  crop  in  the  Anglo-Egyptian 
Sudan.  Two  crops  a  year  are  gathered,  but  besides  this 
wheat,  barley,  beans,  sesame,  onions,  melons  and  many 
other  grains,  fruits,  and  vegetables  do  well;  and  there 
are  considerable  quantities  of  peanuts.  There  are,  in 
the  western  sections,  extensive  forests  yielding  gum  and 
rubber.  The  gum  of  eastern  Kordofan  is  of  two  varieties: 
white,  hashab,  which  is  the  better,  and  red,  talk.  Rubber 
comes  mainly  from  the  Bahr  el-Ghazal  region,  where 
there  are  both  Para  and  Ceara  plantations;  some  is 
obtained  in  the  Sobat  valley.  The  wealth  of  Arabs  is, 
however,  measured  yet  by  their  camels,  horses,  and 
cattle.  Ostrich  farming  is  a  growing  and  profitable 
industry.  The  ancient  gold  mines  in  the  Nubian  desert, 
about  midway  between  Wady  Haifa  and  Abu  Hamed, 
were  reopened  in    1905  and   are  now  paying.     Small 


CENTRAL    AFRICA  141 

quantities  of  gold  dust  are  washed  in  Kordofan,  and  the 
metal  is  found  in  several  other  localities.  There  is 
fairly  good  hgnite  in  Dongola  and  iron  ore  in  Darfur, 
south  of  Kordofan,  as  weU  as  in  the  Bahr  el-Ghazal 
region;  "in  the  last  mentioned  place  mudiria  (?)  iron 
is  worked  by  natives."  The  desert  of  Hofrat  el-Nahas, 
"the  copper  mines,"  is  rich  in  copper  ore  and  mines  have 
been  worked  intermittently  from  the  remote  past. 

The  trade  of  the  condominium  is  systematised  and 
regulated  by  the  Government.  A  governor-general  who 
has  been  recommended  by  Great  Britain  is  appointed  by 
the  Egyptian  Government.  In  1910  a  council  of  four 
oflScials  and  from  two  to  four  civilians,  nominated  by 
the  Egyptian  ministers,  was  created  to  advise  the 
governor-general  in  the  exercise  of  his  official  and 
legislative  duties,  and  all  questions  are  decided  by  a 
majority  vote  of  the  council.  Their  action  is,  however, 
always  subject  to  the  governor-general's  veto.  It  is  to 
be  expected  that  the  appointment  of  Lord  Kitchener 
will  result  in  there  being  more  direct  supervision  from 
Cairo  than  ever  before. 

Archaeological  research  in  the  Sudan  generally  was 
greatly  retarded  by  the  long-continued  political  confu- 
sion, and  the  work  which  had  been  begun  by  French, 
German,  British,  and  other  students  was  stopped  by  the 
Mahdist  outbreaks,  so  that  the  Egyptian  Sudan,  with 
certain  portions  of  Egypt  south  of  Assouan,  was  practi- 
cally closed  to  investigators.  Even  after  the  overthrow 
of  the  Mahdi  at  Omdurman,  in  1898,  it  was  a  long 
time  before  this  work  was  resumed,  and  before  much  had 
been  done  scientists  were  thrown  into  a  state  of  terrible 


142  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

consternation  by  the  Egyptian  Government's  resolution 
to  raise  the  dam  at  Assouan  and  to  extend  the  reservoir 
at  the  first  cataract.  This  plan  threatened  the  whole 
valley  from  Assouan  up  to  Abu  Simbel,  and  haste  was 
demanded  if  opportunities  for  underground  research 
were  not  to  be  lost  forever.  Large  sums  were  granted  for 
this  purpose  and  to  preserve  buildings  which  would  be 
affected  by  the  overflow.  The  University  of  Pennsyl- 
vania sent  out  the  Eckley  B.  Coxe,  Jr.,  expedition  to  the 
southern  half  of  Lower  Nubia,  while  Egyptian  excavators 
worked  from  Korosko  to  Assouan.  From  1907  to  191 1 
an  enormous  mass  of  new  material  relating  to  the  archae- 
ology of  Egypt  and  the  Sudan  was  secured.  All  of 
Nubia,  save  about  twenty  miles  in  the  south,  is  attached 
to  Eg3^t  for  administrative  purposes;  yet  this  boundary 
is  artificial.  The  natural  geographical  and  ethnical 
frontier  of  Egypt  on  the  Nile  is  the  first  cataract.  The 
earliest  writers,  as  did  Diocletian  later,  recognised  this 
fact  clearly,  and  Julian  merely  anticipated  the  opinion 
of  every  modem  observer  when  he  described  "pontus 
Syenes"  as  the  gate  of  Africa. 

This  concluding  paragraph,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  is 
condensed  from  the  fuller  account  given  in  the  Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica,  eleventh  edition.  The  University  of 
Pennsylvania  expedition  opened  a  new  chapter  in  the 
history  of  African  races.  We  had  no  records  of  the 
founders  of  the  first  great  Ethiopian  kingdom  from 
Piankhi  to  Tirhakah,  nor  had  any  fresh  light  been  thrown 
upon  the  relations  of  that  remarkable  king,  Ergamenes, 
with  the  Egyptian  Ptolemies.  But  exploration  of  sites 
in  the  southern  half  of  Lower  Nubia  revealed  the  exist- 


CENTRAL    AFRICA  143 

ence  of  a  wholly  unsuspected  and  independent  civilisa- 
tion which  grew  up  during  the  first  six  centuries  after 
Christ.  Graves  gave  new  types  of  statues,  bronzes, 
ivory  carvings,  and  painted  pottery  —  all  of  the  highest 
artistic  value  —  as  well  as  a  large  number  of  stone 
stelae  inscribed  with  funerary  formulae  in  the  Meroitic 
script;  the  cemeteries  of  Shablul  and  Karanag  yielded 
one  hundred  and  seventy  inscriptions  on  stone,  besides 
inscribed  ostraka. 


CHAPTER  X 

EASTERN  AFRICA 

WE  are  to  include  in  this  chapter  Eritrea,  Abys- 
sinia, the  British  Somali  Coast  Protectorate, 
Italian  Somaliland,  French  Somaliland,  British  East 
Africa  (Ibea),  German  East  Africa,  and  Portuguese 
East  Africa;  all  maritime  states,  except  Abyssinia, 
which  had  access  to  the  Red  Sea  littoral  in  former  times 
and,  inclusively,  stretching  along  the  east  side  of  Africa 
from  1 8°  2'  north  latitude  to  26°  52'  south,  where  the 
Portuguese  possessions  touch  Tongaland  (Natal)  in 
British  territory.  Of  all  these,  Abyssinia  is  the  most 
interesting  in  its  history;  although  British  and  German 
East  Africa  are  probably  quite  as  attractive  to  the  general 
reader  to-day  because  of  the  great  possibilities  they  hold 
for  the  naturalist,  the  sportsman,  the  industrialist,  and 
the  active  merchant. 

At  the  time  of  the  Roman  domination  in  Northern 
Africa  the  country  now  called  Eritrea  formed  part  of 
an  independent  kingdom  which  was  the  same  as  that 
known  later,  somewhat  loosely,  as  Ethiopia.  The  old 
name  Axum,  or  Aksum,  was  applied  specifically  to  a 
city  in  the  present  Abyssinian  province  of  Tigre,  that 
still  possesses  some  remarkable  ruins.  In  1870  Italy 
secured  the  nucleus  of  her  overseas  possessions  by  the 

purchase  of  Assah  for  £1880.     It  was  but  natural  that 

144 


Copyright,  Underwood  ij*  Underwood,  X.  Y. 

Nativf.  Ti«x)i»s  at  Moschi,  East  Africa 
Tbey  are  drilled  by  European  officers 


EASTERN    AFRICA  I45 

Great  Britain  should  look  with  some  jealousy  at  the 
establishing  of  a  port  of  call  which  might  become  a  rival 
for  the  East  India  steamship  service.  But  eventually 
Great  Britaiu's  opposition  to  Italy's  plan  was  withdrawn, 
while  that  of  Turkey  and  Egypt  was  cahnly  ignored, 
and  by  a  decree  dated  July  5,  1882,  Assah  was  declared 
an  Italian  colony.  Then,  in  1885,  Italy  took  possession 
of  Massawa  (or  Massowah),  Great  Britain  approving 
of  the  act  as  tending  to  promote  the  peace  of  the  Red 
Sea  coast  of  Africa.  "Between  1883  and  1888  various 
treaties  were  concluded  with  the  Sultan  of  Aussa,  ceding 
the  Danakil  coast  to  Italy  and  recognising  an  Italian 
protectorate  over  the  whole  of  his  country,  tlirough 
which  passes  the  trade  route  from  Assab  Bay  to  Shoa." 
On  the  first  day  of  January,  1890,  a  decree  was  issued 
by  the  ItaUan  Government  uniting  the  various  Itahan 
possessions  on  the  west  coast  of  the  Red  Sea  into  one 
colony,  which  was  given  the  name  of  the  Colony  of 
Eritrea,  "so  named  after  the  Erythracmn  Mare  of  the 
Romans."  (See  modem  Litri,  in  Asia  Minor.)  At  first 
the  form  of  goverrmient  was  a  military  one,  but  after 
the  defeat  of  the  Italian  forces  by  the  Abyssinians  this 
was  changed  to  a  civil  administration  directly  responsible 
to  the  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  in  Rome.  The  civil 
laws  for  natives  are  those  which  were  established  by  old 
local  usage,  while  Europeans  are  amenable  to  Italian 
laws,  although  in  their  case,  too,  a  certain  regard  is 
had  for  native  customs.  "The  frontiers  were  defined  by 
a  French-Itahan  convention  (January  24,  1900),  fixing 
the  frontier  between  French  Somaliland  and  the  Italian 
possessions  at  Rahtala,  and  also  by  various  agreements 


146  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

with  Great  Britain  and  Abyssinia.  A  tripartite  agree- 
ment between  Italy,  Abyssinia,  and  Great  Britain, 
entered  into  on  the  fifteenth  of  May,  1902,  placed  the 
territory  of  the  Kanama  tribe  on  the  north  bank  of  the 
Setit,  within  Eritrea.  The  convention  of  May  16,  1900, 
settled  the  Abyssinia-Eritrea  frontier  in  the  Afar  country, 
the  boundary  being  fixed  at  sixty  kilometres  from  the 
coast."  In  the  southern  part  of  the  colony  there  are 
several  small  sultanates,  for  example  Aussa  and  Raheita, 
which,  although  still  possessing  a  certain  similitude  of 
independence,  are  nevertheless  under  Italian  protection. 

The  Dahlak  archipelago  and  other  groups  of  islands 
in  the  Red  Sea,  but  near  the  African  shore,  belong  to 
Eritrea.  Meteorologically  considered,  the  colony  may 
be  divided  into  three  distinct  districts.  Along  the  coast 
the  climate  is  decidedly  bad,  being  characterised  by 
great  heat  and  an  excess  of  humidity.  Massawa,  the 
chief  port  and  virtually  the  metropolis,  shows  a  general 
average  for  the  whole  year  of  88°  F.,  and  in  summer  the 
mercury  often  rises  to  1 20°  in  the  shade,  although  June, 
September,  and  October  are,  on  the  whole,  the  hottest 
months.  In  the  season  that  is  euphemistically  called 
winter,  that  is  from  November  to  April,  the  tempera- 
ture is  slightly  lower;  but  at  that  time  malarial  fever  is 
very  bad.  From  about  1650  to  8500  feet  above  sea- 
level  the  climate  is  much  better;  the  air  is  moderately 
cool,  especially  at  night,  because  of  the  great  radiation. 
Europeans  find  life  in  this  section  quite  agreeable. 
Above  eighty-five  hundred  feet  the  climate  is  compar- 
able with  that  of  any  other  alpine  region. 

The  population  is  mixed.     In  the  north   there  are 


EASTERN    AFRICA  147 

Arabs,  or  people  of  Hamitic  descent;  in  the  coast  lands, 
between  Abyssinia  and  the  sea,  the  inhabitants  claim 
to  be  Arabs,  but  they  are  more  like  the  Somalis  and 
Gallas  of  southern  Abyssinia,  British  and  German  East 
Africa.  They  are  almost  all  given  to  fetishism  and  tree 
worship,  although  a  great  many  profess  to  be  devout 
Mussulmans.  These  people  are  admirable  specimens 
of  mankind.  They  have  narrow,  straight  noses,  thin 
lips,  and  small,  pointed  chins;  the  girls  are  very  pretty 
while  still  young,  but  lose  their  physical  attractions 
early.  The  men  are  desperate  fighters  and  successfully 
resisted  the  Egyptians  in  1875,  ^^t  between  1883  and 
1888  the  most  influential  sultan  made  treaties  acknowl- 
edging Italian  protection,  and  these  have  been  reason- 
ably respected  with  the  result  that  these  people  are  now 
quiet  and  peaceful. 

The  Afar  region,  in  the  extreme  south,  is  partly  in 
Eritrea  and  partly  in  Abyssinia,  while  the  Afar  people 
are  found  in  French  Somaliland  in  considerable  num- 
bers. Their  saying,  "Guns  are  useful  only  to  frighten 
cowards,"  gives  a  clue  to  their  character.  In  former 
times  they  were  bold  and  terribly  successful  pirates,  and 
to-day  their  descendants  are  the  only  fishermen  in  the 
Red  Sea  who  dare  hunt  the  big  and  combative  dugong. 
The  line  between  Eritrea  and  French  Somaliland  is  just 
north  of  the  straits  of  Bab-el-Mandeb,  on  the  opposite 
shore  of  which  stands  Perim,  with  which  place  Massawa 
is  connected  by  a  submarine  cable  gi\ing  telegraphic 
connection  to  all  parts  of  the  world.  There  are  land 
telegraph  lines  pretty  well  over  the  colony  and  fairly 
good  roads.    One  railway,  sixty-five  miles  long,  connects 


148  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Massawa  with  Asmara,  the  capital  of  the  colony;  wisely 
chosen  as  such,  for  it  stands  on  the  Hamasen  plateau, 
at  an  elevation  of  seventy-eight  hundred  feet  above 
the  sea.  It  is  intended  to  extend  this  line  to  Sabderat 
and  Kassala  in  the  Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan.  Thus,  when 
the  contemplated  line  from  Khartum  to  Kassala  is  built, 
there  will  be  railway  service  in  connection  with  the 
Anglo-Egyptian  system.  All  things  considered,  while 
Eritrea  is  an  interesting  country  for  the  ethnologist  and 
economist,  it  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  a  place  which 
will  attract  many  tourists. 

The  small  colony,  French  Somaliland,  may  be  dis- 
missed with  a  very  few  words.  Beyond  the  fact  that 
the  intensely  hot  and  uncomfortable  little  port  of  Djibouti 
(English  writers  drop  the  initial  '*D")  affords  a  means 
of  entrance  to  Abyssinia  by  railway,  one  hundred  and 
eighty-eight  miles  long,  to  Dawa,  there  is  really  nothing 
to  be  said  here.  Several  authors  of  interesting  books 
about  East  and  Central  Africa  have  gone  into  the 
country  from  Djibouti,  and  their  descriptions  of  efforts 
to  make  life  at  the  God-forsaken,  dirty  little  spot  ape 
that  of  Paris  are  sufficiently  amusing  to  be  read  as  an 
incident. 

Although  the  Portuguese  had  some  acquaintance  with 
the  country  now  included  in  British  Somaliland  and 
Italian  Somaliland,  we  really  knew  but  little  of  it  imtil 
the  Egyptians  took  possession  of  Berberah  in  1874. 
There  are  some  interesting  problems  for  the  student  of 
comparative  philology  to  unravel,  and  it  is  possible  that 
the  archaeologist  may  find  reward  for  effort  bestowed. 
Commercially  the  volume  of  trade,  which  is  rapidly  grow- 


Copyright,  U ndemood  ir  Underwood.  S .  V. 

A  Gkoli'  oi    \\  .\(;hac;ga  Pkople 

On  the  lower  slopes  oj  Mt.  Kilima  n'jaro,  Iiast  Africa.      The  entire 

jamily,  man  and  beast,  is  housed  in  one  small  but 


EASTERN    AFRICA  149 

ing  to  considerable  proportions,  especially  in  the  section 
under  British  protection,  must  command  the  attention 
of  the  economist.  As  a  field  for  Christian  propaganda, 
both  colonies  demand  attention  from  missionaries,  as  do 
most  of  the  colonies  considered  in  this  chapter. 

Abyssinia  is,  it  hardly  need  be  said,  the  most  interest- 
ing, historically,  politically,  and  ethnologically,  of  all 
these  countries  that  we  have  included  in  our  Eastern 
Africa.  That  missionaries  of  the  Christian  faith  made 
their  way  into  Abyssinia  in  the  earliest  centuries  of  our 
era  has  been  accepted  as  a  fact  for  such  a  long  time  that 
discussion  is  unnecessary.  We  shall  merely  note  that 
in  A.D.  330  Frumentius  was  consecrated  the  first  Bishop 
of  Ethiopia  by  St.  Athanasius  of  Alexandria,  but  that 
little  progress  was  made  in  conversion  until  after  the  close 
of  the  next  century.  Many  interesting  papers  are  to  be 
foimd  in  the  series  of  volumes  entitled  "Jesuit  Rela- 
tions." The  notorious  Prester  John,  after  being  chased 
over  pretty  much  the  whole  of  Asia,  has  been  located 
in  Abyssinia  since  the  fourteenth  century,  and  there  are 
several  accoimts  of  expeditions  to  this  country  given  in 
such  well-known  works  as  "Purchas:  His  Pilgrims"  and 
the  like,  which  contain  statements  that  the  ruler  of  the 
kingdom,  or  empire,  was  this  famous  Prester  John,  or 
descended  from  him. 

The  name  Ethiopia  continued  to  be  associated  with 
Abyssinia  even  as  late  as  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury; for  on  May  2,  1889,  King  Menelek  signed  a  treaty 
with  Italy  in  which  was  this  clause:  "His  Majesty  the 
King  of  Kings  of  Ethiopia  consents  to  make  use  of  the 
government  of  His  Majesty  the  King  of  Italy  for  the 


150  AFRICATO-DAY 

treatment  of  all  questions  concerning  other  powers  and 
governments."  Because  of  this,  Italy,  not  unnaturaUy, 
claimed  protectorate  rights  over  the  whole  of  Abyssinia. 
As  it  is  too  long  a  story  to  tell  here,  for  little  could  be 
omitted  so  interesting  is  it  all,  we  refrain  from  comment- 
ing upon  the  political  troubles  that  ensued  and  Italy's 
discomfiture.  In  September,  1889,  this  treaty  was  rati- 
fied in  Italy  by  Menelek's  representative,  the  Ras 
Makonnen,  who  entered  into  a  convention  by  the  terms 
of  which  Italy  recognised  Menelek  as  "emperor  of 
Ethiopia,"  while  Menelek  recognised  the  Italian  colony 
of  Eritrea  and  arrangement  was  made  for  a  special 
Italo-Abyssinian  currency  and  for  a  loan  with  which  to 
readjust  the  Abyssinian  currency,  etc. 

Since  the  beginning  of  the  present  century  we  may 
say  that  Abyssinia's  autonomy  has  been  restored; 
although  the  presence  in  the  capital,  Adis  Ababa,  of 
representatives  of  various  European  States,  exercising 
decidedly  more  than  merely  diplomatic  functions,  has 
tended  somewhat  to  impugn  the  integrity  of  Abyssinia's 
complete  independence.  The  Anglo-French-Italian 
agreement  of  December,  1906,  provides  in  its  preamble 
that  it  is  to  the  interest  of  the  three  signatories  "to 
maintain  intact  the  integrity  of  Ethiopia,"  and  Article 
One  provides  for  their  co-operation  in  maintaining  "the 
political  and  territorial  status  quo  in  Ethiopia."  But 
every  student  will  note,  with  varying  feelings  according 
to  his  individual  bent,  the  absolute  ignoring  of  Abyssinia 
in  the  seemingly  praiseworthy  agreement  to  preserve 
the  peace.  In  1903  the  American  Government  con- 
cluded a  commercial  treaty  with  Abyssinia  in  terms 


EASTERN    AFRICA  151 

which  are  more  in  the  way  of  recognising  her  autonomy 
than  any  of  the  European  conventions  display. 

For  the  time  being,  at  any  rate,  we  may  consider  the 
frontiers  of  Abyssinia  as  being  fairly  well  defined;  and 
that  country,  which  at  one  time  exercised  rights  of 
cormnunication  to  the  shores  of  the  Red  Sea,  is  now 
relegated  to  the  position  of  an  inland  state,  a  strip, 
varying  in  width  from  forty  to  two  hundred  and  fifty 
miles,  intervening  between  her  frontier  and  the  Red  Sea. 
The  coimtry  is  divided,  almost  equally,  into  two  districts, 
that  in  the  east  being  comparatively  low  land,  that  in 
the  west  high.  There  is  a  spur  of  low  mountains,  the 
Harrar  Hills,  running  out  towards  the  east  into  British 
Somaliland.  But  there  is,  besides,  a  large  tract  of  low 
country  in  the  southwest,  the  Sobat  territory,  which 
is  a  part  of  the  Nile  basin.  Abyssinian  Somaliland, 
back  of  British  Somaliland  and  Italian  Somahland, 
comprises  about  one-third  of  the  kingdom.  Naturally, 
the  climate  of  Abyssinia  is  very  variable,  but  with  the 
exception  of  most  parts  of  the  lower  lands,  it  is  fairly 
healthy  and  in  the  heights  of  medium  altitude  it  is 
exhilarating.  Some  mountain  peaks  run  up  to  fifteen 
thousand  feet  above  the  sea.  There  are  no  large  cities 
except  Harrar,  which  was  originally  founded  by  Arabs. 
Axum  was  formerly  the  capital  city  of  a  great  Semitic 
people,  whose  language,  as  it  was  spoken  at  the  time 
when  Christianity  was  introduced,  continues  to  be  the 
hieratic  form.  "  The  Chronicles  of  Axum  were  pre- 
served in  the  church,  and  are  frequently  referred  to  as 
the  Books  oj  Axum.  The  most  interesting  of  the  monu- 
ments still   extant   are  the  obelisk  and  the   so-called 


152  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

coronation-room,  both  constructed  of  granite,  and  the 
latter  containing  some  valuable  bilingual  inscriptions."  * 
Magdala,  which  was  the  residence  of  King  Theodore,  is 
chiefly  associated  in  our  minds  with  the  terrible  suffer- 
ings of  certain  British  subjects  who  were  kept  impris- 
oned there  for  some  time,  in  1866,  and  for  whose  relief 
expeditions  were  organised  that  led,  eventually,  to  the 
proper  opening  of  the  country  and  the  establishing  of 
the  present  satisfactory  conditions. 

Abyssinia  cannot  yet  be  said  to  be  well  developed; 
there  is  a  railway,  one  hundred  and  eighty-eight  miles 
long,  connecting  Dawa  with  Djibouti,  and  there  are 
caravan  routes  which  give  communication  with  Massawa 
(Italian)  and  Jaila  and  Berbera  (British).  All  of  these 
ports  are  connected  with  Aden  by  steamship  lines,  and 
that  place  is  the  distributing  point  for  all  the  East 
African  trade.  The  bulk  of  Abyssinian  commerce  con- 
sists of  shipments  of  skins  (hides  and  pelts)  to  the 
United  States,  to  which  country,  also,  practically  all  the 
coffee,  called  "Harrar  Mocha,"  is  sent,  and  this  is  con- 
sidered to  be  a  first-class  article.  The  cattle  are 
mostly  of  the  zebu,  or  hump-backed  breed,  and  are 
rather  small.  With  the  exception  of  one  numerically 
small  breed  of  sheep,  these  animals  have  no  wool  to 
shear.  There  are,  however,  a  good  many  goats  that,  in 
a  measure,  supply  this  deficiency.  Until  a  few  years 
ago  the  media  of  exchange  were  the  old  "Maria 
Theresa"  doUars,  bars  of  rock-salt,  and  rifle  cartridges, 
but  in  1905  the  Bank  of  Abyssinia  was  created  under 
Egyptian  laws.     King  Menelek  had  given  a  concession 

*Enc.  Brit.,  nth  ed. 


EASTERN    AFRICA  153 

to  the  National  Bank  of  Egypt,  with  this  purpose  in 
view.  This  bank  is  now  coining  the  Menelek  dollar  or 
talari. 

British  East  Africa,  the  eastern  part  of  which  was 
formerly  known  as  Ibea,  comprehensively  includes  all 
territory  under  British  control  on  the  east  side  of  the 
continent  south  of  the  Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan  and  north 
of  German  East  Africa.  On  the  north  it  borders  also 
on  Abyssinia;  on  the  south  the  German  colony;  on 
the  west  the  condominium,  and  on  the  east  Italian 
Somahland  and  the  Indian  Ocean.  It  is  now  understood 
as  comprising  the  protectorates  of  Zanzibar,  Uganda, 
and  East  Africa.  Along  the  coast  there  is  a  narrow 
belt  of  low  land,  marked  by  the  most  luxuriant  of  tropical 
vegetation,  for  the  equator  crosses  the  southern  end  of 
the  colony.  But  even  here  the  climate  is  not  nearly  so 
unhealthy  as  it  is  in  some  other  places  similarly  situated 
as  regards  the  tropics,  for  there  is  a  constant  breeze  from 
the  ocean  and  the  soil  is  exceptionally  dry.  Back  of 
the  coast  the  land  rises  rapidly  in  a  series  of  steps  which 
show  a  singular  parallelism  in  climate  and  vegetation; 
the  first  of  these  uplifts  is  rather  arid,  but  once  past 
this  the  variation  through  sub-tropical,  semi-temperate, 
and  other  phases  up  to  an  alpine  region  is  most  marked. 
The  highlands  are  wonderfully  healthy,  fever  being 
vmknown. 

After  crossing  the  backbone  of  the  mountains,  there 
is  a  dip  in  the  western  part  of  the  territory  into  the 
basin  of  Lake  Victoria  Nyanza,  which  may  be  reached 
by  the  Mombasa- Victoria  Nyanza  railway,  584  miles 
long.    This  is  essentially  a  mountain  line;  the  gradients 


154  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

are  frequently  from  88  to  105  feet  in  a  mile,  the  curves 
are  sharp,  and  the  gauge  only  3.28  feet  (one  metre), 
that  of  the  Sudan,  South,  and  Central  African  lines 
being  3.50  feet.  At  the  Mau  Escarpment  (cutting)  the 
altitude  is  8,321  feet  above  sea-level.  The  cost  of  the 
line  was  about  $46,000  per  mile.  It  was  finished  in 
1903  and  promptly  put  a  stop  to  the  impressing  of 
slaves  to  be  used  as  porters  on  the  old  caravan  routes, 
thus  deaUng  a  deathblow  to  the  slave  trade  in  this  part 
of  the  continent.  In  fact,  the  main  reasons  for  con- 
structing the  railway  were  to  suppress  the  slave  trade 
and  to  strengthen  the  position  of  the  British  in  Uganda. 
Of  this  last-named  section,  which,  properly  speaking, 
should  be  called  Buganda,  it  is  well  to  say  a  little 
something  because  of  the  rather  extraordinary  diver- 
sity of  physical  aspects  which  it  presents.  There  are 
mountain  peaks  forever  snow-capped,  elevated  table- 
lands that  offer  every  attraction  of  climate  and  condition 
for  life  that  one  could  ask,  primeval  forests  which  are 
almost  impassable,  so  closely  grow  the  trees  and  under- 
brush ;  but  there  are,  too,  great  swamps  and  arid  regions 
utterly  devoid  of  attraction.  The  most  remarkable 
peak  is  Mt.  Elgon,  an  extinct  volcano  with  a  crater  that 
is  ten  miles  in  diameter  and  the  top  more  than  fourteen 
thousand  feet  above  sea-level.  Near  the  northern  shore 
of  Lake  Victoria  Nyanza  are  the  famous  Ripon  Falls, 
discovered  by  Speke  in  1862  and  subsequently  proved 
by  Stanley  to  be  the  only  outlet  of  the  lake,  just  at 
Napoleon  Gulf.  The  Nile  is  here  fully  four  or  five 
hundred  feet  wide  and  is  well  said  to  be  "fully  born." 
In   Uganda    are   found    the   Pigmy-prognathons,    "the 


EASTERN    AFRICA  155 

so-called  'Kongo  pigmies'  of  Simliki  forest,  of  Kiagwe 
in  Buganda,  and  of  the  western  flanks  of  Mt.  Elgon, 
and  the  types  of  Forest  Negroes."  On  Lake  Victoria 
Nyanza  there  are  steamboats  which  run  in  connection 
with  trains  from  Mombasa;  others  are  foimd  on  the 
Victoria  Nile,  called  here  also  Somerset  River,  and  on 
Lakes  Ibrahim  and  Koja,  as  well  as  on  Lake  Albert 
Nyanza  and  the  Mountain  Nile.  A  short  line  of  rail- 
way, fifty  miles,  is  under  construction  from  Jinja  to 
Kakindu,  along  the  valley  of  the  Victoria  Nile,  from  the 
place  where  it  issues  from  the  lake  to  the  point,  near 
Lake  Koja,  where  the  stream  becomes  navigable.  The 
history  of  this  province  is  very  interesting  and  its  perusal 
will  repay  the  careful  reader. 

German  East  Africa,  stretching  along  the  Indian 
Ocean  from  4°  to  10°  40'  south  latitude,  extends  west- 
ward to  Lake  Nyasa,  Lake  Tanganyika,  and  Belgian 
Kongo.  In  the  north  it  includes  within  its  borders 
about  one-half  of  the  great  Victoria  Nyanza.  From 
the  British  East  Africa  boundary,  south  to  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Bagamoyo  (opposite  Zanzibar  Island),  the 
narrow  coast  belt  is  similar  to  that  of  the  British  posses- 
sions; but  then  the  mountains  trend  abruptly  away  from 
the  sea  and  some  run  out  in  the  great  plain  of  the  south- 
em  and  western  districts  of  this  province.  But  in  the 
northern  part  of  the  colony,  about  midway  of  the  north- 
ern border  and  between  the  ocean  and  Lake  Victoria 
Nyanza,  are  the  loftiest  peaks  in  all  Africa  —  Mt.  Kilima 
n'jaro  (19,320  feet)  and  Mt.  Meru  (14,955  feet);  while 
in  their  immediate  vicinity  are  such  a  number  of  high 
mountains  that  the  region  may,  with  much  propriety, 


1 56  AFRICATO-DAY 

be  called  the  Himalayas  of  Africa;  for  that  name,  it 
should  be  noted,  means  "Snow  Abode."  Railways, 
either  built  or  under  construction,  are  a  trunk  line  from 
Dar  es-Salaam  through  M'rogoro  and  Tabora  to  Ujiji 
on  Lake  Tanganyika;  from  Tabora  a  branch  to  M'wansa 
on  Victoria  Nyanza;  and  in  the  south  from  Kilwa 
through  Wiedhafen  to  Lake  Nyasa,  to  be  carried  on 
until  connection  is  made  with  the  British  system  (Cape 
to  Cairo  Railway)  and  into  the  southern  part  of  Belgian 
Kongo.  This  last  line  will  eventually  be  one  of  the 
most  important  "Across  Africa"  railways. 

As  only  the  coast  region  of  this  country  was  known 
to  strangers  until  well  into  the  nineteenth  century, 
we  find  that  there  are  many  Arabian  and  Lidian 
merchants  at  the  ports.  In  the  interior  there  are  many 
mixed  races,  Banta  and  Semitic;  the  preponderance 
among  the  inhabitants  goes  to  the  Swahili  people.  But 
the  province  is  rapidly  filling  up  with  immigrants  from 
Europe  and  elsewhere.  Even  domestic  slavery  was 
suppressed  from  December  31,  1905,  and  since  then  all 
children  bom  of  slave  parents  are  free.  Before  leaving 
this  colony  we  must  comment  again  upon  the  remarkable 
feature  of  its  physical  geography.  In  the  north  the 
Victoria  Nyanza  basin  drains  into  the  Mediterranean; 
in  the  west  Tanganyika  into  the  Atlantic,  and  in  the 
south  Nyasa  into  the  Indian  Ocean.  The  principal 
rivers  within  the  colony  make  their  way  into  the  last- 
named  ocean. 

Portuguese  East  Africa.  The  official  title  is  the 
"State  of  East  Africa."  The  coast-line  extends  from 
10°  40'  south  latitude  to  26°  52',  where  the  Portuguese 


Copyrifihl,  L' ndera-ood  i-  Underwood,  .V.  1'. 

A  "CoLMKv  SroKi:"  in  tmi-.  W'li.ns  of  German  East  Africa 

Caily  printed  calicoes  from  United  States'  mills 

are  very  popular  sellers 


EASTERN    AFRICA  157 

possessions  join  those  of  Great  Britain;  from  north  to 
south  the  distance  is  about  1430  miles.  To  the  west 
are  the  British  South  Africa  States,  and  the  total  area  is 
about  293,500  square  miles;  yet  the  population  (in 
1909)  was  only  3,120,000.  The  colony  includes  the 
island  of  Mozambique,  the  name  of  which  was  formerly 
that  of  the  whole  territory.  Save  at  Pemba,  about 
midway  of  the  coast  (where  there  is  ample  anchorage 
for  vessels  of  large  size),  the  harbours  are  poor  and  few. 

The  whole  coast  region  and  that  portion  of  the  Zam- 
besi valley  adjacent  to  the  river  are  very  unhealthy,  but 
the  higher  lands  of  the  interior  offer  a  salubrious  cli- 
mate. Wild  animals  are  plenty,  and  plants,  both  tropical 
and  those  of  cooler  zones,  are  abundant,  so  that  the 
province  still  holds  attractions  for  the  naturahst. 
Communications,  despite  a  certain  apathy  on  the  part 
of  the  Portuguese  Government  and  private  promoters, 
are  reasonably  good  for  such  a  colony.  In  Portuguese 
territory  the  Zambesi  is  navigable  for  light  draft 
steamboats,  except  at  the  Kebressa  (Karao-bassa) 
rapids,  four  hundred  miles  from  the  river's  mouth, 
and  these  are  as  yet  an  insuperable  obstacle.  The 
Shire  branch  of  the  Zambesi  gives  direct  communi- 
cation, by  boat  and  rail,  with  British  South  African 
possessions. 

There  is  a  railway  from  Lourengo  Marques  into 
Swaziland  and  the  Transvaal,  which  will  be  alluded  to 
again  in  a  later  chapter.  Another  line  extends  from 
Beira,  on  the  coast,  to  Mashonaland,  Rhodesia.  A  hght, 
narrow  gauge  line  runs  inland  from  Inhambane  (an 
indifferent  harbour,  about  24°  south  latitude)  for  some 


158  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

fifty  miles  and  affords  facilities  for  getting  into  Gaza- 
land.  Other  lines  are  under  construction;  Beira  to 
Sena,  on  the  Zambesi,  and  from  Quilimane  to  the  same 
river.  There  are  caravan  routes  in  all  parts  of  the 
colony,  but  these  are  nothing  more  than  very  indifferent 
trails  along  which  travel  is  difficult  and  very  slow.  The 
whole  trade  of  the  colony  amounts  to  some  fifty  million 
dollars  annually,  but  altogether  too  large  a  part  of  it 
consists  of  very  inferior  wines  imported  from  Europe 
and  sold  to  the  natives,  in  both  Portuguese  and  British 
dominions,  at  low  prices,  with  results  that  do  not  make 
for  the  best  civilisation.  The  history  of  this  section  is 
interesting,  especially  in  those  chapters  which  treat  of 
the  jealousies  and  conflicts  of  British  and  Portuguese 
for  possession  and  for  trade. 

It  would  be  remiss  to  leave  East  Africa  without  men- 
tion of  the  Nyika,  that  lovely  wonderland  which  seems 
to  have  exercised  a  strange  fascination  upon  every  travel- 
ler who  has  come  within  its  influence.  It  is  a  strange 
medley  of  forest  and  glade  in  such  endless  change  that 
the  visitor  sometimes  becomes  surfeited  with  its  weird 
beauty  and  wonderful  effects.  The  air  possesses  a 
tropical  brightness  and  plays  strange  tricks  upon  the 
eye,  making  small  objects  appear  great  ones,  till  gnus 
are  metamorphosed  into  elephants,  ostriches  become 
rhinoceroses,  zebras  turn  into  wild  asses! 

We  take  leave,  for  the  time  being,  of  East  Africa  with 
a  touch  of  human  nature,  borrowed  from  an  American 
explorer  and  sportsman  —  a  dance  in  the  Mem  country. 
After  certain  preliminaries,  such  as  obtaining  permission 
of  the  strangers,  and  this  carried  with  it  reasonable 


EASTERN    AFRICA  159 

consideration  of  some  kind  as  well  as  the  approval  of 
the  ''doctor"  who  acted  as  master  of  ceremonies,  "the 
dance  then  commenced,  and  it  was  a  most  weird  and 
wild  affair.  The  Witch  Doctor  first  took  the  precaution 
of  placing  a  guard  around  us,  so  that  none  of  the  excited 
warriors  might  do  us  an  injury  while  in  the  half -frenzied 
state.  The  warriors,  decked  out  in  their  semi-Masai 
garb  and  painted  hideously,  then  formed  up  in  two  com- 
panies in  front  of  us,  one  on  our  right  and  the  other  on 
our  left.  Groups  of  from  four  to  six  advanced  from 
each  side,  and  with  savage  shouts  and  yeUs  dashed  at 
each  other,  bounding  into  the  air  with  great  leaps  and 
making  their  spears  quiver  in  their  hands.  They  circled 
round  in  front  of  us,  feigning  to  attack  each  other  and 
making  fierce  passes  in  the  air,  leaping  and  yelling  all 
the  time,  until  one  party  retired  pursued  by  the  other. 
This  was  repeated  time  after  time,  until  the  whole  of  the 
company  had  in  turn  taken  part  in  the  display,  after 
which  the  two  companies  united  and  went  round  us  in  a 
great  circle,  springing  and  bounding  and  hurling  defiant 
words  at  their  absent  enemy  —  in  this  case  the  warriors 
of  a  chief  called  Thularia,  whose  district  adjoined.  Dur- 
ing all  the  time  that  the  war-dance  was  going  on,  the 
women  of  the  tribe  kept  away  at  a  discreet  distance, 
not  daring  to  come  near.  Now,  however,  on  its  con- 
clusion, they  approached,  decked  out  in  all  the  finery 
of  the  Meru  belles,  and  each  with  a  broad  smile  on  her 
face,  without  any  bashfulness  or  timidity,  selected  a  fa- 
vourite warrior,  and  a  peace  ingoma  commenced.  In  this 
the  performers  made  a  ring,  the  men  on  the  outside  and 
the  women  on  the  inside,  facing  each  other.    Then,  with 


l6o  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

hands  on  each  other's  shoulders,  they  commenced  an  up- 
and-down  motion,  raismg  themselves  on  their  toes  and 
then  sinking  down  again  on  their  heels,  accompanied  by  a 
monotonous  chant  which  was  weirdly  interrupted  now 
and  then  by  the  beating  of  the  war  drum  or  the  savage 
yell  of  an  excited  warrior.  .  .  .  The  festivities  were  kept 
up  throughout  the  day,  nor  did  they  cease  at  nightfall, 
as,  while  I  lay  awake,  far  into  the  night,  I  could  plainly 
hear  the  fiendish  sounds  of  the  heathen  revelry." 


CHAPTER  XI 
WESTERN  AFRICA 

THIS  section  presents  such  a  number  of  states  and 
colonies,  and  some  of  them  are  so  small,  yet  by 
no  means  unimportant,  while  others  are  almost  conti- 
nental in  size,  that  it  is  somewhat  diflScult  to  do  the 
subject  full  justice  within  the  limits  of  that  small  space 
we  have  assigned  to  it.  Besides,  there  must  almost  of 
necessity  be  some  repetition,  because  such  colonies  as 
those  of  France,  Spain,  and  other  European '  Powers, 
while  properly  included  in  Western  Africa,  in  reality 
stretch  back  into  the  territory  of  the  Sahara  and  Central 
Africa. 

Beginning  at  the  extreme  northern  and  western  parts 
of  the  section,  we  shall  find  that  the  Spanish  colony, 
Rio  d'  Oro,  first  engages  our  attention.  Its  northern 
border,  where  it  adjoins  Morocco,  has  been  but  recently 
defined;  the  most  northerly  point  claimed  by  Spain  is 
Cape  Bojador.  The  southern  and  eastern  lines  of  Rio 
d'  Oro  are  clearly  determined  by  the  French-Spanish 
convention  of  1900.  As  this  colony  is  in  reality  only  a 
part  of  the  Sahara,  it  is  practically  all  desert,  for  there 
are  but  few  oases  and  these  are  small;  consequently 
the  water  supply  is  almost  nil.  It  follows,  therefore, 
that  the  population  is  very  scant;  no  rehable  statis- 
tics are  available.     In  the  estimated  area  of  seventy 

161 


l62  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

thousand  square  miles  the  people  are  almost  all  Arabs 
or  Berbers,  and  Mahommedans,  of  course. 

The  name  of  the  colony  comes  from  the  fact  that 
the  Portuguese  discoverers,  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
mistook  the  small  estuary,  to  which  they  gave  the  name 
Rio  d'  Oro,  for  a  river;  and  because  they  obtained  con- 
siderable gold  dust  from  the  natives  they  fancied  the 
place  was  rich  in  that  precious  metal.  The  estuary,  or 
narrow  bay,  runs  back  into  the  land  for  some  twenty-two 
miles;  at  its  mouth  it  is  five  miles  wide  and  it  is  navigable 
for  more  than  two-thirds  of  its  length.  Were  it  not  for  a 
sandbar,  which  is  not  easily  passed  in  rough  weather, 
the  estuary  would  be  an  excellent  harbour,  for  there  is 
good  holding  ground  and  plenty  of  water  in  the  broad 
channel.  Between  the  estuary  and  the  sea  there  is  a 
slender  peninsula  twenty-three  miles  in  length,  from 
two  miles  to  one  and  a  quarter  wide,  and  only  twenty 
feet  above  sea-level. 

The  principal  Spanish  settlement,  Villa  Cisneros,  is  at 
about  the  central  point  of  the  coast-line,  where  the  cli- 
mate is  generally  temperate  and  the  place  not  specially 
unhealthy  except  in  the  autumn.  In  1885  Spain  took 
possession  of  the  coast  between  Capes  Bojador  and 
Blanco  and  attempted  to  exercise  protectorate  rights 
somewhat  indefinitely  back  into  the  interior.  This 
latter  was  resisted  by  France,  already  claiming  protecto- 
rate over  the  whole  western  Sahara,  and  the  question 
was  adjusted  in  1900,  as  has  been  stated.  The  principal 
exports  are  esparto  grass  and  manzanilla  (the  common 
chamomile).  The  wild  animals  are  mostly  small.  The 
natives  rear  a  few  cattle,  sheep,  and  camels.     But  a 


WESTERN    AFRICA  163 

remarkable  contrast  may  be  drawn  between  the  lean 
earth  and  the  bounteous  sea,  which  is  teeming  with  life. 
Fishing  is  an  important  industry,  the  principal  catch 
being  cod,  and  this  is  carried  on  by  the  inhabitants  of 
the  Canary  Islands  and  by  Frenchmen. 

We  next  group  together  most  of  the  French  posses- 
sions in  this  section  of  Africa;  viz.,  Senegal,  Upper 
Senegal  and  Niger,  Guinea  (French),  the  Ivory  Coast, 
the  territory  of  Mauretania,  and  that  large  part  of  the 
Sahara  included  in  French  West  Africa.  In  area  it  is 
nearly  two  million  square  miles  (Europe  is  3,760,000 
square  miles),  but  more  than  half  of  it  is  desert.  Its 
outlines  may  be  roughly  dej&ned  as  the  greater  part  of 
Africa  west  of  the  Niger  delta  (British  territory)  and 
south  of  the  Tropic  of  Cancer;  and  thus  it  will  be  under- 
stood that  it  includes  the  territory  along  the  upper  and 
middle  course  of  the  Niger  River,  the  entire  Senegal  basin, 
and  the  extreme  southwestern  portion  of  the  Sahara. 
The  most  northern  point  on  the  coast  is  Cape  Blanco, 
where  it  joins  the  Spanish  colony  just  described,  and  it 
thence  takes  in  all  the  coast  down  to  the  British  settle- 
ment of  Gambia,  thus  including  Cape  Verde,  the  most 
western  point  of  the  continent.  It  then  sweeps  back 
towards  the  east,  forming  the  hinterland  of  numerous 
colonies,  either  independent  or  protectorates  of  other 
European  Powers,  except  when,  as  in  the  case  of  French 
Guinea,  the  Ivory  Coast,  and  Dahomey,  itself  dips  down 
to  the  Atlantic  or  Gulf  of  Guinea;  and  again,  on  the 
north,  these  possessions  in  French  West  Africa  them- 
selves are  the  hinterlands  of  Morocco,  Algeria,  and  Tunis, 

While  not  yet  precisely  defined,  perhaps,  we  may  as 


164  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

well  say  that  the  eastern  boundary  of  this  enormous 
tract  is  the  frontier  of  the  Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan. 
Sufficient  has  already  been  said  of  the  Sudan  part  and 
we  now  content  ourselves  with  a  hasty  discussion  of  the 
western  section.  When  apposite,  we  may  adopt  the 
description  given  in  the  authority  already  mentioned,  and 
say  that  there  are  three  marked  physical  characteristics 
to  be  noted :  first,  a  dense  forest  region  back  of  a  narrow 
coast  belt  which  is  greatly  broken  by  inlets  and  lagoons; 
second,  a  region,  small  in  comparison  with  the  vast  size 
of  the  whole,  of  moderately  elevated  and  fertile  plains, 
seldom  rising  higher  than  two  thousand  feet  above  sea- 
level;  and  third,  that  great  section,  north  of  the  Senegal 
and  Niger  Rivers,  that  trends  away  into  the  Sahara 
Desert.  The  most  elevated  districts  are  far  away  in  the 
west,  the  Futa  Jallon  territory,  back  of  French  Guinea, 
where  we  find  the  ultimate  sources  of  the  Niger,  the 
Senegal,  and  the  Gambia  Rivers,  and  in  the  Gon  (or 
Gona)  region,  both  presenting  mountain  ranges  along, 
the  southern  edge  of  the  desert  plateau  and  in  which  are 
peaks  rising  to  six  thousand  feet  or  more. 

The  chief  towns  of  this  French  West  Africa  are  Tim- 
buctoo,  Jenne,  and  Segu,  on  the  Niger,  Porto  Novo,  in 
Dahomey,  St.  Louis  and  Dakai,  in  Senegal.  The  last 
named  is  probably  the  most  important  from  the  French 
point  of  view,  because  it  is  a  naval  base  besides  being  a 
thriving  commercial  seaport.  The  majority  of  the 
inhabitants  of  this  western  region  are  typical  negroes, 
although  in  Senegal  and  the  Sahara  there  is  a  strong 
admixture  of  Berber  and  Arab  blood;  and  yet  a  most 
liberal  estimate  of  the  population  puts  the  total  at  only 


Copyright,  Uruieruood  ir  Underwood,  .V.  Y. 

Throne  Room  in  the  Slltan's  Palace  at  Zanzibar 


WESTERN    AFRICA  165 

about  thirteen  millions,  of  whom  some  twelve  thousand 
are  Europeans, 

In  the  upper  lands  the  flora  is  often  magnificent.  The 
fertile  hillsides  are  covered  with  baobab,  tamarind,  and 
other  valuable  forest  trees.  Some  of  the  baobab  {Adan- 
sonia  digitata)  at  twenty-four  feet  from  the  ground  are 
thirty-four  feet  in  diameter.  There  are,  too,  many  vari- 
eties of  the  acacia;  one  of  them  {Acacia  Adansonia) 
makes  excellent  ship  timber.  Palms  are  numerous,  of 
course.  The  wood  of  the  ronier  (pahn)  resists  moisture 
and  the  attacks  of  insects  most  wonderfully.  In  some 
places,  Cayor  for  example,  this  tree  forms  magnificent 
forests.  There  are,  too,  many  rubber  plants.  The 
soil  in  a  goodly  part  of  Upper  Senegal  and  Niger  is 
remarkably  fertile,  producing  rice,  Indian  com,  millet, 
melons,  manioc,  grapes,  bananas,  and  other  fruits. 
There  is,  too,  rich  pasturage  of  guinea-grass,  and  the 
people  own  large  herds  of  cattle  and  sheep.  The  faima 
is  hardly  entitled  to  much  consideration  as  compared 
with  the  superabundance  and  character  of  East  African 
animal  life. 

Strictly  speaking  according  to  French  ofi&cial  defini- 
tion, the  colony  of  Senegal  means  the  towns  of  Dakar, 
St.  Louis,  Gorce,  and  Rufisque,  a  narrow  strip  along 
the  Dakar-St.  Louis  railway,  and  a  few  other  detached 
places.  Its  area  then,  is  only  about  four  hundred  and 
forty  square  miles,  and  the  population,  in  1904, 
something  over  one  hundred  thousand.  Pohtically, 
however,  the  colony  includes  certain  native  states 
under  French  administration,  and  therefore  has  an  area 
of  nearly   seventy-five  thousand   square  miles  and  a 


l66  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

population  approaching  the  two  million  mark.  One  of 
the  most  important  of  these  protected  states  is  Bondu, 
visited  by  Mungo  Park,  who  had  a  very  rough  experi- 
ence there.  Later  Major  W.  Gray,  when  trying  to 
determine  the  source  and  course  of  the  Niger,  found 
the  capital,  which  had  been  Fatteconde  in  Park's  time, 
transferred  to  Bulibani.  A  railway  connects  Dakar 
with  St.  Louis.  The  Senegal  is  navigable  during  high 
water  —  August  to  November  —  for  a  long  distance,  to 
Kayes,  whence  another  line  goes  to  the  Niger.  There 
is,  besides,  direct  railway  connection  between  Dakar 
and  the  Niger  by  way  of  Thies  to  Kayes.  This  colony 
is  well  equipped  with  telegraph  lines  and  there  is  a  cable 
from  Dakar  to  Brest,  France. 

The  colony  of  Upper  Senegal  and  Niger  is  bounded 
on  the  north  by  the  Saharan  territory  which  comes 
under  the  jurisdiction  of  Algeria;  on  the  west  by  Senegal 
and  the  Mauretania  district;  on  the  south  by  the  French 
colonies  of  Guinea  and  the  Ivory  Coast,  the  Northern 
Territories  of  the  Gold  Coast  (British),  Togoland  (Ger- 
man), and  Dahomey  (French).  On  the  east  the  Mili- 
tary Territories  (French  and  accounted  a  part  of  this 
colony)  extend  to  Lake  Chad  in  French  Equatorial 
Africa  —  the  official  name  given  in  1910  to  all  French 
possessions  in  equatorial  Africa,  consisting  of  the  Chad 
Circumscription,  the  Ubangi-Shari  Circumscription,  the 
Middle  Kongo  Colony,  and  the  Gabun  Colony;  the  two 
first  named  divisions  form  the  Ubangi-Shari- Chad  Col- 
ony. The  colony  is  bounded  on  the  south  by  Nigeria 
(British).  It  thus  contains,  practically,  all  the  French 
possessions  in  northwest  and  central  Africa,  is  over 


WESTERN    AFRICA  167 

two  hundred  thousand  square  miles  in  area,  yet  has  a 
population  of  some  three  millions  only.  A  specially 
interesting  factor  of  this  population  are  the  Fulas  (vari- 
ous alternate  names),  who  are  now  a  conspicuous 
example  of  what  improperly  assimilated  European  civil- 
isation is  responsible  for  in  spoiling  Africans.  These 
Fulas  are  probably  a  mixture  of  Berber  and  Negro 
stocks;  they  certainly  are  not  Egyptian.  They  were 
good  soldiers,  especially  cavalry-men;  but  they  are 
now  luxurious,  idle,  and  getting  to  be  worthless. 

Returning  to  the  Atlantic  coast,  we  find  the  Uttle 
British  colony  of  Gambia,  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  of 
that  same  name,  "wedged  into  Senegal  and  surrounded 
by  it  save  seawards."  It  is  the  most  northerly  of 
British  West  African  possessions,  comprising  strips  on 
both  sides  of  the  river  running  inland  about  two  hundred 
miles.  Although  the  area  of  the  whole  dependency  is 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  four  thousand  square  miles 
and  the  population  one  hundred  and  sixty-three  thou- 
sand, as  estimated  in  1907,  yet  the  British  Government 
considers  the  colony  as  restricted  to  the  tract  immedi- 
ately at  the  river's  mouth,  about  seventy  square  miles. 
Above  this  the  sphere  of  British  influence  extends  for 
about  six  miles  on  each  side  of  the  stream,  and  within 
it  are  some  petty  native  states,  such  as  Barra  and 
Komm'bo.  The  climate  during  the  dry  season  — 
November  to  January  inclusive — is  the  best  in  this  part 
of  the  coast,  and  at  other  seasons  it  is  not  so  very  bad, 
Gambia  being  a  fairly  healthy  place,  all  things  consid- 
ered ;  doubtless  the  persistent  crusade  against  mosquitoes 
has  had  much  to  do  with  this.    Bathurst  is  the  chief 


l68  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

town,  population  some  eight  thousand,  and  is  an 
interesting  example  of  the  small  British  colonial  town. 
Considerable  gold  was  formerly  sent  from  here,  but  that 
industry  has  practically  ceased,  although  some  gold 
dust  may  still  be  bought.  There  are  some  interesting 
but  inexplicable  archaeological  remains,  stone  circles  and 
posts  apparently  akin  to  the  Druids'  work;  these  are 
still  venerated  by  Mohammedans.  Slavery  was  finally 
suppressed,  in  every  form,  only  in  1906. 

Portuguese  Guinea  extends  along  the  coast  from  Cape 
Roxo  to  the  Cogon  estuary  and  inland  until  it  reaches 
the  Casamance  district  of  (French)  Senegal  on  the  north: 
on  the  east  and  south  it  is  bounded  by  French  Guinea. 
The  area  is  about  fourteen  thousand  square  miles  and 
the  population  is  variously  estimated  at  from  two  to 
eight  hundred  thousand.  The  land  is  mostly  low  and 
the  climate  unhealthy.  Several  of  the  rivers  are  navi- 
gable, some  of  them  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles, 
but  the  navigation  is  awkward.  The  history  of  this 
colony  takes  us  back  to  the  first  half  of  the  fifteenth 
century  and  recalls  the  joy  of  the  early  navigators  upon 
finding  the  coast  bearing  off  to  the  east;  thus  holding  out 
a  promise  of  speedily  circumnavigating  Africa.  In  the 
nineteenth  century  the  United  States  figures  in  the  his- 
tory, for  in  1870  President  Grant,  acting  as  arbitrator, 
disallowed  Great  Britain's  claim  to  the  island  of  Bulama 
and  a  part  of  the  mainland.  Portugal  has  done  ahnost 
nothing  towards  developing  the  colony,  and  consequently 
it  is  of  little  importance.  "If,  however,  agriculture  and 
commerce  suffer,  the  ethnologist  and  zoologist  find  in 
this  easily  accessible  little  enclave  a  rich  field  for  inves- 


WESTERN    AFRICA  169 

tigation,  the  almost  nominal  sovereignty  of  Portugal 
having  left  the  country,  practically  uninfluenced  by 
European  culture,  in  much  the  same  condition  that  it 
was  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries." 

French  Guinea.  This  was  formerly  caUed  Rivieres 
du  Sud,  and  it  is  peculiarly  irregular  in  shape.  On  the 
southwest  it  faces  the  Atlantic;  on  the  northwest  and 
north  it  is  bounded  by  Portuguese  Guinea  and  Senegal; 
on  the  east  and  southeast  by  Upper  Senegal  and  the 
Ivory  Coast  Colony  (French),  and  on  the  south  by 
Sierra  Leone  (British)  and  Liberia  (independent).  The 
coast  runs  N.N.W.  and  S.S.E.  between  latitude  10°  50' 
and  9°  2'  north,  only  one  hundred  and  seventy  miles. 
The  area  is  approximately  one  hundred  thousand  square 
miles,  and  the  inhabitants  number  about  two  and  a  half 
millions.  The  important  district  of  Futa  Jallon  is  in 
the  western  part,  just  back  of  that  which  still  bears 
the  name  of  Rivieres  du  Sud.  The  climate  is  usually 
very  bad,  but  the  Niger  basin  is  fairly  healthy.  The 
history  of  the  coast  region  is  intimately  associated  with 
the  adventures  of  the  early  Portuguese  explorers,  who 
pushed  down  into  this  part  of  the  world  in  the  fif- 
teenth century.  Physically,  the  accounts  to  be  given 
of  Sierra  Leone,  Liberia,  and  the  Ivory  Coast  apply 
to  French  Guinea  with  reasonable  precision. 

A  British  protectorate  was  declared  in  1906  over  the 
coast  district  of  Sierra  Leone  as  well  as  a  large  area  of 
the  dependent  interior,  and  the  colony  now  is  some 
thirty  thousand  square  miles  in  area.  Under  British 
direction  the  development  has  been  rather  remarkable; 
there  is  a  railway  from  Freetown  through  Waterloo  to 


lyo  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Songatown,  and  across  the  Ribbi  River  to  Rotafunk 
and  Bo.  The  trade  of  the  colony  has  already  attained 
appreciable  proportions,  the  share  of  the  United  States 
amounting  to  some  $300,000  annually  and  steadily 
increasing. 

Liberia.  This  negro  republic  is  east  of  Sierra  Leone 
and  west  of  the  (French)  Ivory  Coast  Colony;  its  coast- 
line is  about  three  hundred  miles  in  length.  The  north- 
em  boundary  is  quite  irregular,  so  that  the  width  of  the 
repubhc  varies  much ;  but  the  greatest  breadth  is  about 
two  hundred  miles  in  a  northeast  to  southwest  direc- 
tion. The  frontiers  on  the  north  and  east  were  indefi- 
nite until  adjusted  with  France  in  1907,  since  which 
date  the  territory  is  rather  larger  than  was  indicated 
on  maps  prior  to  that  time.  The  area  is  now  forty- 
one  thousand  square  miles.  The  geographical  position 
of  this  Uttle  republic  gives  it  a  strategic  importance 
that  deserves  attention ;  it  is  just  at  the  shoulder  of  the 
continent,  where  the  coast  turns  sharply  to  the  east, 
and  it  is  on  the  direct  route  of  vessels  plying  between 
the  United  States  or  Europe  and  the  West  Coast  of 
Africa  or  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  Unfortunately,  it 
has  no  good  harbour,  although  the  anchorage  at  Mon- 
rovia is  safe,  unless  the  weather  is  exceptionally  bad 
from  the  southwest  or  south.  A  small  artificial  harbour 
could  easily  be  made  at  Great  Bassa  without  enormous 
expense. 

At  certain  places  along  the  coast  and  in  the  river 
bottoms,  the  soil  is  swampy,  but  the  general  surface  is 
hilly  and  even  mountainous,  some  peaks  rising  to  six  or 
nine  thousand  feet  above  sea-level  and  giving  oppor- 


WESTERN    AFRICA  171 

tunities  for  the  establishing  of  sanitaria.  There  are 
several  rivers  of  some  size,  but  the  awkward  bars  are 
an  obstacle  to  navigation.  The  coast  belt,  as  all  along 
this  region,  is  unhealthy,  but  from  about  one  hundred 
miles  inland  the  climate  becomes  agreeable  and  the 
country  is  healthy.  Broadly  speaking,  the  whole  terri- 
tory is  covered  with  dense  forests,  which  have  been 
cut  down  in  spots  to  permit  of  husbandry.  The  fauna 
and  flora  are  sufficiently  peculiar  to  attract  the  natu- 
ralist, and  the  possibilities  have  by  no  means  been 
exhausted. 

The  traditions  and  history  of  the  republic  are  very 
interesting.  The  colony  was  founded  as  a  home  for 
manumitted  slaves  (Americans  especially),  but  when 
Jehudi  Ashmun  (who  is  sometimes,  inaccurately,  called 
the  "founder")  visited  it  in  1822  it  was  in  a  deplorable 
state;  yet  under  his  direction,  and  with  the  assistance 
of  Ralph  Randolph  Gurley,  who  in  1824  christened  the 
place  "Liberia,"  the  colony  was  reorganised  and  put 
upon  a  permanent  basis.  In  1847  the  colonists  who  had 
gone  from  America  declared  their  country  an  independ- 
ent republic  and  its  status,  as  such,  was  recognised  by 
the  great  Powers,  except  the  United  States.  Until  1857 
the  colony  may  be  said  to  have  composed  two  inde- 
pendent republics,  Liberia  and  Maryland,  each  having 
small  settlements  scattered  along  its  coast,  while  exert- 
ing but  Uttle  influence  in  the  interior.  Not  urmaturally, 
disputes  as  to  boundaries  occurred  with  Great  Britain 
and  France,  both  of  whom  were  disposed  to  encroach 
improperly;  and  it  was  not  until  1903  that  the  Une 
between  Liberia  and  Sierra  Leone  was  defined,  that 


172  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

between  Liberia  and  the  Ivory  Coast  being  established 
later.  Reports  of  this  disposition  to  trespass  reached 
America  and  in  1909  President  Roosevelt  appointed  a 
commission  to  investigate  the  matter.  Satisfactory 
results  followed  and  United  States  officials  were  placed 
in  charge  of  the  Liberian  Customs'  service.  In  July, 
1910,  it  was  announced  to  the  world  that  the  American 
Government,  acting  with  the  consent  of  Great  Britain, 
France,  and  Germany,  would  take  charge  of  all  ques- 
tions relating  to  the  welfare  of  the  repubUc.  A  loan  of 
£500,000  was  arranged  with  which  to  put  the  finances 
into  satisfactory  and  sound  condition. 

This  fact  of  an  "American  Protectorate"  in  Africa 
has  not  received  the  attention  that  one  would  expect, 
but  it  is  comforting  to  know  that  Europe  has  no 
fault  to  find  with  the  intrusion.  The  need  of  a  strong 
hand  was  made  apparent  by  the  futile  attempt  of  the 
Liberian  Government  to  control  the  natives  of  the  Kru 
coast  (in  the  southern  section  of  the  republic),  whose 
turbulence  had  led  to  trouble  such  as  improper  fines 
levied  upon  foreign  steamships  for  unintentional  breaking 
of  regulations,  or  even  to  their  being  firing  upon ;  and  in 
1910  the  natives  near  Cape  Palmas,  about  Harper,  were  in 
open  warfare  with  the  Liberian  authorities.  In  1906 
the  total  revenue  (gross)  of  the  republic  was  upwards 
of  $325,000  and  the  expenses  about  $300,000,  but  it 
must  be  noted  that  some  of  the  revenue  was  collected 
in  paper  currency  of  doubtful  value.  There  is  much  to 
be  said  of  the  interesting  history  of  this  Negro  Republic, 
but  space  forbids.  That  there  is  yet  plenty  of  work  for 
sympathetic  people,  is  demonstrated  by  the  fact  that 


WESTERN    AFRICA  173 

even  now  most  of  the  forest  women  go  about  naked; 
although  it  must  also  be  said  that  the  Mohammedan 
costume  is  becoming  popular  throughout  the  country. 
Sierra  Leone  and  Liberia  were  included  in  what  was 
formerly  called  the  Grain  Coast. 

East  of  Liberia  is  the  French  West  African  colony  of 
Cote  d'lvoire,  the  Ivory  Coast;  the  name  suggests  the 
opinion  held  by  the  early  European  explorers.  Its 
boundary  on  the  west  has  been  indicated;  on  the  east  it 
marches  with  the  British  Gold  Coast  Colony,  etc.,  and 
on  the  north  it  borders  upon  the  French  colony  of  Upper 
Senegal  and  Niger.  In  area  it  is  some  120,000  square 
miles  and  the  population  has  been  estimated,  by  the 
French,  at  980,000  natives  and  some  600  Europeans; 
while  other  estimates  run  as  high  as  two  millions.  The 
coast-Une  is  380  miles,  without  lagoon  or  promontory 
in  the  west;  some  lagoons  towards  the  east;  but  there 
are  no  good  harbours  because  of  bars  and  heavy  surf, 
The  highest  lamd  is  in  the  northwest,  near  the  Liberian 
frontier,  where  there  are  some  peaks  estimated  at  6000 
feet  or  more  in  altitude.  The  coast  region  is  extremely 
unhealthy  and  yellow  fever  is  there  prevalent  and  viru- 
lent. This  region  has  been  called  Cote  des  Dents,  "  Coast 
of  the  Teeth,"  and  Kwa-Kwa  because  of  the  natives' 
imitation  of  the  quacking  of  ducks.  These  names  per- 
sisted until  towards  the  close  of  the  last  century. 

The  British  Gold  Coast  Colony  is  a  comprehensive 
name  for  the  Gold  Coast  proper,  and  includes  Ashanti 
and  the  Northern  Territories  of  the  Gold  Coast  which 
extend  northward  to  the  eleventh  parallel  of  latitude, 
joining    French    possessions.     A    line    separating    the 


174  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

foreland  from  Ashanti  was  fixed  in  1906.  These  juris- 
dictions are  all  noted  for  their  primeval,  unopened 
forests,  in  which  are  hardwood  trees  of  magnificent 
proportions;  there  are,  also,  bombax  trees  two  hundred 
feet  tall.  But  these  forests  are  painfully  monotonous, 
since  there  are  no  flowers,  birds,  or  beasts.  Ferns  and 
brakes,  some  of  enormous  size,  are  abundant,  and  the 
mimosa  grows  to  a  height  of  from  thirty  to  sixty  feet. 
Where  the  forest  has  been  cleared,  the  soil  is  fertile  and 
it  is  cultivated  with  care.  Twenty-five  miles  southeast 
of  Kumasi,  in  Ashanti,  is  Lake  Basumchioi,  the  sacred 
lake  of  the  Ashantis.  The  history  of  the  colony,  inclu- 
sively speaking,  is  most  interesting,  as  it  is  hardly  neces- 
sary to  state;  for  the  many  battlefields  marked  on  our 
maps  point  to  the  numerous  British  expeditions.  In  the 
spring  of  191 1  we  received  accounts  of  one  of  these 
against  a  refractory  tribe  in  the  Northern  Territories, 
inhabiting  the  Sapan  on  Tong  Hills  close  to  the  French 
frontier  in  the  north.  The  operations  took  place  in 
difiScult,  rocky  country  and  were  entirely  successful, 
the  machine-guns  handled  by  the  three  or  four  hundred 
British  troops  proving  too  much  for  the  natives. 

There  is  a  railway  from  Kumasi  to  Akkar,  via  Man- 
goase,  in  the  centre  of  the  cocoa  plantations,  and  another 
from  Sekondi,  on  the  coast  to  Kumasi;  the  latter  serv- 
ing to  exploit  the  gold  fields,  from  which  the  output,  in 
1905,  amounted  to  considerably  over  $1,250,000  in 
value.  There  is  a  branch  line  from  Tarkwa  to  Prestia 
on  the  Ankobra  River.  There  are,  too,^many  circui- 
tous trails  through  the  forests.  The  district  is  admin- 
istered as  a  crown  colony,  not  being  independent.    The 


WESTERN    AFRICA  175 

natives  are  still  slaves  to  their  fetishes,  and  it  is  worth 
mentioning  that  in  early  times,  the  King  of  Ashanti 
was  compelled  to  have  3333  wives,  because  that  was 
the  number  required  by  the  "fetish,"  although  a  goodly 
part  of  them  were  nothing  more  than  palace  servants. 
The  people  display  considerable  skill  in  weaving  cotton, 
moulding  pottery,  and  making  ornaments  of  silver  and 
gold,  both  sohd  and  plate,  —  a  large  quantity  of  this 
last  mentioned  work  was  found  in  the  king's  palace  at 
Kumasi  when  the  place  was  captured  by  the  British  in 
1874.  In  these  various  industries  the  influence  of  Moor- 
ish art  is  noticeable.  The  one-time  independent  Anlo 
tribes,  whose  territory  appears  in  quite  recent  maps  as 
a  separate  state,  have  been  absorbed  into  the  Northern 
Territories. 

Togoland  (the  name  has  no  connection  with  the  famous 
Japanese  naval  officer !)  is  a  narrow  strip,  with  a  seafront 
of  only  thirty-two  miles,  which  reaches  back,  between 
the  British  Gold  Coast  Colony,  on  the  west,  and  Da- 
homey (French)  on  the  east  to  the  Upper  Senegal  and 
Niger  colony  on  the  north,  where  Togoland  is  something 
like  one  hundred  miles  or  more  wide.  It  was  annexed 
by  Germany  in  1884.  The  area  is  estimated  at  33,700 
square  miles  and  the  population  at  about  one  million. 
Physically,  the  colony  is  quite  like  the  rest  of  this 
section.  It  is  a  part  of  the  notorious  and  infamous  old 
"Slave  Coast";  very  unhealthy  along  the  sea  and  likely 
to  be  most  uncomfortable  in  the  north  because  of  the 
hot,  dry  wind  from  the  Sahara  when  the  air  is  charged 
with  fine  sand,  although  the  temperature  may  then  fall 
even  in  midsummer. 


176  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

We  begin,  in  this  colony,  to  come  into  touch  with 
the  interesting  Hausa  people,  bom  traders,  who  roam 
over  the  country  in  large  caravans.  The  contrast 
between  the  activity  of  the  German  colonists  and  the 
apathy  of  the  Portuguese,  as  noted,  is  most  marked  in 
results.  Togoland  is  rich  in  natural  products  which 
have  been  so  well  exploited  that  "it  was  the  first  German 
colony  to  dispense  (1903- 1904)  with  an  imperial  subsidy 
towards  its  support."  A  railway  connects  the  port  of 
Lome  with  Little  Popo,  and  this  is  to  be  continued  into 
French  territory  and  then  northward  to  reach  eventually 
Gaya  on  the  Niger  River,  in  northern  Dahomey  (or 
Upper  Senegal  and  Niger,  since  the  line  of  demarcation 
has  not  yet  been  clearly  drawn  by  the  French  authorities). 
Another  line  goes  from  Lome  to  Misahohe  and  will  be 
pushed  on  into  the  interior.  There  are  also  good  wagon- 
roads  everywhere. 

This  coast,  prior  to  German  appropriation,  had  a 
most  unsavoury  reputation.  At  "the  time  when  'the 
scramble  for  Africa'  began,  the  narrow  strip  of  coast  over 
which  the  King  of  Togo  ruled  was  the  sole  district 
between  the  Gambia  and  the  Niger  to  which  Great 
Britain,  France,  or  some  other  civiHsed  power  had  not  a 
claim.  At  Togo,  Bremen  merchants  had  trading  sta- 
tions, and  taking  advantage  of  this  fact  Dr.  Gustav 
Nachtigal,  German  imperial  commissioner,  induced  the 
King  of  Togo  (July  5,  1884)  to  place  his  colony  imder 
German  suzerainty.  The  claims  made  by  Germany  to 
large  areas  of  the  hinterland  gave  rise  to  considerable 
negotiations  with  France  and  Great  Britain,  and  it  was 
not  until  1899  that  the  frontiers  were  fixed  on  all  sides." 


WESTERN    AFRICA  177 

The  peaceful  progress  of  the  colony  has  since  been  steady. 
At  stated  intervals  the  native  chiefs  are  summoned  to 
Lome,  the  capital,  to  discuss  with  the  German  officials 
about  matters  relating  to  special  or  general  government. 

Dahomey.  This  French  colony  reaches  from  the  Gulf 
of  Guinea  north  to  the  indefinite  limits  of  the  old, 
familiar  kingdom  of  Dahomey.  Although  it  has  a  coast- 
line of  only  seventy-five  miles,  between  Togoland  on  the 
west  and  Nigeria  (British)  on  the  east,  it  spreads  out  so 
much  in  the  north  that  the  area  is  about  forty  thou- 
sand square  miles;  the  population  is  estimated  at  over 
one  miUion.  There  are  four  well-marked  seasons:  "the 
harmattan  or  long  dry  season,  from  the  first  of  Decem- 
ber to  the  fifteenth  of  March;  the  season  of  the  great 
rains,  from  the  fifteenth  of  March  to  the  fifteenth  of 
July;  the  short  dry  season,  from  the  fifteenth  of  July 
to  the  fifteenth  of  September;  and  the  'little  rains/ 
from  the  fifteenth  of  September  to  the  first  of  Decem- 
ber." Along  the  coast  it  is  always  hot,  the  yearly 
average  being  80°  F. 

The  Dahomeys  (who  call  themselves  Fon  or  Fawin) 
are  a  very  interesting  people.  They  are  tall,  well- 
formed,  proud,  reserved  in  demeanour,  polite  in  their 
intercourse  with  strangers,  warlike,  and  keen  traders. 
There  is  another  class,  the  Minas,  who  are  remark- 
able surf-men.  Kotomi  is  the  chief  port  and  seat  of 
government.  From  here  the  railway  starts  for  Gaya 
(see  Togoland);  it  is  a  narrow  gauge  line,  one  metre, 
3.28  feet.  As  there  is  almost  always  a  Seabreeze 
Kotomi,  despite  the  heat,  is  a  comparatively  healthy 
place  for  white  men.    There  is  a  short  branch  rail- 


178  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

way  from  the  main  line  into  the  western  part  of  the 
colony.  There  are,  in  addition  to  the  steam  railways, 
many  electric  tramway  lines.  One,  twenty-eight  miles 
long,  connects  Porto  Novo  with  Sakete  close  to  the 
British  frontier  (Nigeria)  in  the  direction  of  Logos. 
The  reader  who  is  interested  in  history  will  naturally 
give  some  attention  to  the  awful,  bloody  orgies  known 
as  "Dahomey  Customs";  but  an  account  of  them  is  too 
long  to  be  inserted  here. 

The  great  British  protectorate  of  Nigeria  includes  the 
lower  basin  of  the  Niger  River,  the  coimtry  between  that 
river  and  Lake  Chad,  —  thus  reaching  back  into  Central 
Africa,  —  and  includes  the  Fula  empire,  that  is  the 
Hausa  states,  as  well  as  the  greater  part  of  the  former 
Bomu  sultanate.  Its  area  is  somewhere  about  three 
hundred  and  thirty-eight  thousand  square  miles  and 
the  population  is  estimated  at  fifteen  milHon  souls. 
There  are  three  distinct  climatic  and  physical  regions: 
the  delta  of  the  Niger  and  the  coast,  the  forest  lands, 
and  the  high  plateau  of  the  interior.  There  are  many 
rivers,  and  ocean-going  steamships  can  ascend  some  of 
them  for  distances  varying  from  fifteen  to  forty  miles. 
A  pecuharity  to  be  noted  of  the  Niger  and  Benue 
Rivers  is  their  very  slight  fall  in  their  lower  reaches; 
at  the  confluence  of  these  rivers,  some  two  hundred  and 
fifty  miles  from  the  sea,  the  altitude  is  only  two  hundred 
and  fifty  feet.  Nigeria,  on  the  southeast,  joins  the 
German  colony  of  Kameruns. 

The  rivers  are  the  most  important  factor  for  internal 
communication.  A  railway  of  the  standard  Central 
and    South    African    gauge    (3   ft.   6  in.)    runs  from 


WESTERN    AFRICA  179 

Lagos  to  Ibadan,  sixty  miles  inland.  It  is  to  be 
extended  on  through  Oshogbo,  Ilorin,  Jebba,  and  Zungeni 
to  She,  and  here  a  junction  will  be  effected  with  the  Baro- 
Kano  line.  A  short  light  line,  laid  on  the  surface  of  the 
ground  without  permanent  way,  has  been  built  from 
Baryuko,  on  the  Kaduna  River,  in  the  northern  part  of 
the  colony,  to  the  capital,  Zungeru;  it  is  successful  and 
remunerative.  Another  standard  gauge  line  (3  ft.  6  in.) 
leaves  the  Niger  River  at  Baro  and  goes  via  Bida  and 
Zarra  to  Kano,  about  four  hundred  miles.  There  are, 
also,  good  wagonroads  pretty  well  over  the  whole  terri- 
tory. Regular  steamship  service  is  maintained  with 
Liverpool  and  up  and  down  the  African  coast.  The 
trade  is  principally  in  "jungle  produce,"  and  there  are 
considerable  exports  of  rubber,  ebony,  etc.  In  former 
times  this  trade  was  entirely  in  the  hands  of  Arabs,  who 
carried  their  purchases  to  Tripoli  by  caravan  across  the 
desert.     This  has  been  practically  discontinued. 

Kamenms,  from  the  Portuguese  Camaroes,  "Prawns," 
and  therefore  justifying  the  English  Cameroon,  is  a  large 
West  African  German  colony,  bounded  on  the  north- 
west by  Nigeria;  on  the  north  by  Lake  Chad;  on  the 
east  and  south  by  French  Kongo,  except  the  short  stretch 
of  the  Spanish  colony.  Muni.  Its  area  is  estimated  at 
one  hundred  and  ninety  thousand  square  miles  and  its 
population  at  three  and  a  half  millions,  of  whom  about 
twelve  hundred  are  white.  It  is  in  the  northwest 
comer  of  the  great  Central  African  plateau,  and  the 
hills  reach  almost  to  the  Atlantic,  but  there  is  a  narrow 
strip  of  low  coast.  Good  grass  land  is  found  in  the  south, 
and  quantities  of  hardwood,  valuable  for  cabinet  making, 


l8o  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

are  taken  from  the  vast  forests.  The  colony  is  rich  in 
natural  products;  e.g.,  oil-palm,  rubber  plants,  etc. 
Wild  animals  are  plentiful,  and  include  some  of  the  great 
pachyderms  and  camivora.  Duala  is  the  chief  town. 
Steamship  lines  ply  between  the  colony  and  Germany 
and  England;  on  the  rivers  there  are  many  lines  of 
steam-launch  service.  One  railway  goes  fron;  Hickory 
to  Bayong,  one  hundred  miles,  to  Victoria,  Sappo  near 
Buea,  thence  northward;  another,  from  Duala  to  the 
upper-waters  of  the  Nyong.  The  history  of  the  colony 
is  connected  with  the  name  of  Fernando  Po. 

The  Spanish  Settlement  of  Muni.  The  same  agree- 
ment between  France  and  Spain  which  estabHshed  the 
boundaries  of  Rio  d'  Oro,  as  has  been  stated,  likewise 
settled  a  dispute  over  a  tiny  bit  of  land  at  the  mouth 
of  the  River  Muni,  wedged  in  between  Kameruns  and 
French  Kongo.  Along  the  coast  it  extends  from  the 
Campo  River  to  the  Muni  River.  The  northern  frontier 
is  Kamerim;  the  eastern  boundary  is  ii°  20'  East,  and 
the  southern  is  the  first  parallel  of  north  latitude  to  its 
point  of  intersection  with  the  Muni  River. 

French  Kongo.  In  1910  this  was  ofl5cially  renamed 
French  Equatorial  Africa.  It  comprises  the  Gabun 
Colony,  the  Middle  Kongo  Colony,  Ubangi-Shari  Cir- 
cumscription and  Chad  Circimiscription;  the  two  last- 
named  divisions  forming  the  Ubangi-Shari-Chad  Colony 
(see  Upper  Senegal  and  Niger).  It  is  most  irregular  in 
shape.  It  is  bounded  by  the  Atlantic  on  the  west;  by 
the  Spanish  Muni  River  Settlement,  the  German  colony 
of  Kameruns,  and  the  Sahara  on  the  north;  by  the 
Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan  on  the  east,  and  by  the  Portu- 


WESTERN    AFRICA  l8l 

guese  territory  of  Kabinda  and  Belgian  Kongo  on  the 
south.  For  the  greater  part  of  its  length  the  southern 
frontier  is  the  middle  course  of  the  Kongo,  the  Ubangi 
and  the  M'bomu,  the  chief  northern  affluent  of  the 
Kongo;  but  in  the  southwest  the  French  frontier  keeps 
north  of  the  river,  whose  navigable  lower  course  is 
divided  between  Portugal  and  Belgium.  The  estimated 
area  of  the  whole  colony  is  seven  hundred  thousand 
square  miles,  and  the  population  from  six  to  ten 
millions. 

The  large  part  of  the  coast  is  backed  by  primeval 
forest,  with  trees  one  hundred  and  fifty  to  two  hundred 
feet  tall.  The  scenery  is  most  pleasingly  varied  — 
open  lagoons,  mangrove  swamps,  scattered  shrubs  and 
trees,  park-like  reaches,  dense  walls  of  tangled  under- 
wood along  the  rivers,  prairies  of  tall  grass,  and  patches 
of  cultivation.  Behind  the  coast  region  are  the  Crystal 
Mountains,  springing  up  three  thousand  to  forty-five 
hundred  feet;  further  on  is  a  plateau  with  an  elevation 
varying  from  fifteen  to  twenty-eight  hundred  feet. 
The  rivers  nm  in  deep  clefts,  with  steep  walls,  almost 
perpendicular;  in  some  places  as  much  as  seven  hun- 
dred and  sixty  feet  high.  Across  this  varied  country 
the  rivers  traverse  four  defined  terraces.  The  cUmate, 
in  general,  is  hot  and  dangerous.  The  fauna  is  what 
might  reasonably  be  expected.  The  huge  Cardisoma 
armalum  (heart-crab)  is  kept  in  tanks  and  carefully 
fattened  for  the  table.  Of  the  flora,  baobab,  silk-cotton, 
screw-pines,  and  palm  trees  are  plentiful. 

The  rivers  afford  the  principal  means  of  communica- 
tion and  give  access  to  a  greater  part  for  ocean  steam- 


l82  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

ships  as  far  as  Matahdi  on  the  lower  Kongo;  then  round 
the  falls  by  railway  to  Stanley  Pool.  From  Brazzaville, 
on  Stanley  Pool  there  are  six  hundred  and  eighty  miles 
of  uninterrupted  steam  navigation  northeast  right  away 
into  the  heart  of  Africa,  three  hundred  and  thirty  on 
the  Kongo  and  three  hundred  and  fifty  on  the  Ubango. 
At  the  farthest  point  is  Zongo,  where  there  are  rapids; 
but  beyond  are  several  navigable  stretches  along  the 
Ubango,  and  for  small  steamers  there  is  access  to  the 
Nile  by  means  of  the  Bahr  el-Ghazal  tributaries.  The 
Sanga  joins  the  Kongo  two  hundred  and  seventy  miles 
from  Bezoe  and  is  navigable  three  hundred  and  fifty 
miles  to  and  beyond  Kannu.  The  Shari  also  is  navi- 
gable for  a  considerable  distance,  and  by  means  of 
its  tributary,  the  Logone,  connects  with  the  Benue 
and  the  Niger,  affording  a  waterway  between  the  Gulf 
of  Guinea  and  Lake  Chad.  Stores  for  the  military 
and  government  posts  are  forwarded  by  this  route. 
There  is,  however,  no  connecting  link  between  the 
coast  rivers  —  Gabun,  Ogowe,  and  Kwilu  —  and  the 
Kongo  system.  A  railway,  five  hundred  miles  long, 
is  under  construction  from  Gabun  to  Sanga.  Another 
is  proposed  from  Loango  to  Bizol.  A  narrow  gauge  line, 
one  metre,  begun  in  1908,  was  the  first  railway  in 
French  Kongo;  it  serves  to  develop  rich  copper  and 
other  mines.  There  is  still  in  commission  the  caravan 
route  via  Wadai  across  the  Sahara  to  Bengazi  on 
the  Mediterranean.  There  are  sundry  telegraph  lines 
throughout  the  territory.  Very  large  landed  estates 
were  granted  to  Limited  Liability  Companies,  the  con- 
cessionaires representing  a  capital  of  £4,000,000,  the 


Copyright,  Underwood  jr  Underwood.  .V.  1'. 

Eternal  Snow  Almost  on  the  Eqi  ator 
An  American  exjdorer  dimlnnii  Ml.  Kibo  (Kilima 
n'jaro),   /y.joo  Jeel    bifib    in    Lust    Central  AJrica 


WESTERN    AFRICA  183 

concessions  ranging  in  size  from  four  hundred  and 
twenty-five  to  fifty-four  thousand  square  miles.  It  was 
felt  that  the  French  Government  was  discriminating  un- 
fairly in  favour  of  these  companies,  and  certain  Liverpool 
merchants,  having  made  considerable  private  invest- 
ments in  good  faith,  entered  a  protest  which  was  waived 
aside  with  a  legal  quibble.  The  matter  was  taken  up 
by  the  British  Foreign  Office  and  in  September,  1908, 
the  merchants  won  their  point. 

Kabinda  is  a  small  Portuguese  possession  north  of  the 
mouth  of  the  Kongo  River,  only  three  thousand  square 
miles  in  area.  It  resembles  in  every  way  the  coast 
region  of  the  Kongo.  The  chief  town  is  Kabinda,  a 
seaport.  The  colony  is  noted  for  its  beauty  and  fertil- 
ity, and  it  is  called  the  Paradise  of  the  Coast;  its 
harbour  is  sheltered  and  commodious,  with  four  fathoms 
of  water.  The  place  was  a  slave  market,  as  were  most 
of  the  ports  to  the  north.  The  inhabitants  are  Bantu- 
Negroes,  called  Kabindas ;  they  are  intelligent,  energetic, 
and  enterprising,  daring  sailors  and  active  traders. 

Kongo  Free  State  was  the  name  given  by  British  writers 
to  the  Etat  Independent  de  Congo.  It  was  formally 
annexed  to  Belgium  in  1908.  It  is  the  development  of 
the  private  venture  of  a  royal  investor.  King  Leopold  II, 
who  became  the  ofl&cial  head  of  the  state  in  1885.  For 
the  interesting  history,  reference  may  be  had  to  a  large 
number  of  special  books  and  all  encyclopaedias.  The 
United  States  was  the  first  to  recognise  the  "  International 
Association  of  the  Kongo,"  on  April  22,  1884.  Other 
Powers  followed  promptly.  In  1885  and  1886  various 
protocols  and  agreements  were  entered  into  to  determine 


184  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

the  boundaries.  The  final  result  was  that  the  Kongo 
Free  State  had  for  neighbours  France,  Portugal,  and 
Great  Britain  on  the  north,  Great  Britain  and  Germany 
on  the  east,  and  Great  Britain  and  Portugal  on  the 
south.  King  Leopold's  greatest  desire  was  to  push 
forward  the  northeastern  section  until  he  could  reach 
the  Nile,  and  this  was  eventually  accompUshed.  Fla- 
grant maladministration  became  apparent  and  the  most 
heartless  cruelty  to  natives  was  openly  charged.  Condi- 
tions became  so  notorious,  especially  in  the  Domaine 
de  la  Couronne,  that  a  British  Commission  of  Inquiry 
was  appointed.  The  Commission's  report,  but  without 
the  full  evidence,  was  submitted  in  1902,  and  the  scandal 
of  the  Kongo  Rubber  Trade  became  an  open  one,  which 
aroused  indignation  in  all  parts  of  the  civilised  world. 
In  November,  1908,  the  state  ceased  to  exist  as  an  inde- 
pendent domain,  and  sovereign  rights  were  assumed 
immediately  by  Belgium,  since  which  time  the  disgraceful 
proceedings  have  been  suppressed,  at  least  in  a  measure. 
The  coast-line  is  only  twenty-five  miles  long,  yet  the 
total  area  is  estimated  at  nine  hundred  thousand  square 
miles,  almost  wholly  in  the  Kongo  Basin,  and  the  popu- 
lation at  from  fourteen  to  thirty  millions.  It  touches 
the  Nile  Valley  on  the  east  and  all  the  western  shore 
of  Lake  Tanganyika  as  well  as  northern  Rhodesia;  on 
the  south,  Angola  of  Portuguese  West  Africa.  Living- 
stone's description  of  this  territory  is  most  interesting. 
The  inhabitants  are  almost  all  Bantu-Negroes,  but 
there  are  some  pygmies  who  were  probably  aborigines. 
There  is  a  railway  from  Matadi,  one  hundred  and 
eighty-five  miles  from  the  mouth  of  the  Kongo,  past 


WESTERN    AFRICA  185 

the  cataracts  to  Stanley  Pool.  It  is  two  hundred  and 
sixty  miles  long  and  cost  £2,720,000.  From  Stanley 
Falls  another  railway  goes  towards  the  Nile.  Great 
Britain,  in  1906,  agreed  to  co-operate  in  its  construc- 
tion from  Belgian  Kongo  through  the  Lado  Enclave 
to  the  navigable  Nile  near  Lado,  it  being  contemplated 
to  establish  a  joint  service  of  steamboats  and  railways 
from  the  Kongo's  mouth  to  the  Red  Sea.  Another  rail- 
way, seventy-nine  miles  long,  follows  the  left  bank  of 
the  Kongo  from  Stanley  Falls  past  the  rapids  to  Pon- 
thierville,  whence  there  is  a  navigable  waterway,  three 
hundred  miles,  to  Nyangiwe  and  from  there  by  the 
Lado  railway  to  Lake  Tanganyika.  At  Nyangiwe  on 
the  main  stream  another  railway  passes  round  the  next 
cataracts  into  Upper  Lualabe.  The  total  steam  con- 
nection is  2150  miles,  1548  by  water  and  596  by  rail. 
Another  line,  ninety  miles,  goes  from  Boma  into  May- 
umbe.  The  Katanga  district,  as  has  been  already  stated, 
is  served  almost  wholly  from  Rhodesia.  The  colony  is 
included  in  the  Postal  Union. 

The  Portuguese  possessions  in  Southwest  Africa  are 
now  known  officially  as  the  Province  oj  Angola,  a  name 
corrupted  by  the  Portuguese  from  the  Bantu  word 
Ngola  which  was  for  a  time  restricted  to  the  coast 
between  the  Dande  and  Kwanza  Rivers,  one  hundred 
and  five  miles,  including  the  territory  just  back  thereof. 
Save  for  that  part  of  the  eastern  boundary  which 
marches  with  Rhodesia,  in  Barotseland,  and  the  southern 
line  along  the  German  possessions,  the  frontiers  have 
been  already  sufficiently  indicated.  This  is  a  very  large 
colony,  nearly  half  a  million  square  miles  in  area  and 


l86  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

having  a  population  that,  in  1906,  was  estimated  at  over 
four  millions.  While  there  are  sundry  small  bays  and 
one  deep  inlet  —  Great  Fish  Bay  {Bahia  dos  Tigres)  — 
there  is  only  one  fairly  good  harbour,  Lobito  Bay,  where 
large  ships  may  discharge  cargo  close  inshore.  The 
low,  rather  swampy,  coast  region  is  unhealthy  for 
Europeans,  but  in  the  highlands  of  the  interior,  say 
from  thirty-three  hundred  feet  upwards,  the  air  is  brac- 
ing. The  fauna  and  flora  display  no  marked  features 
which  differentiate  them  from  other  adjacent  parts  of 
tropical  West  Africa.  There  are  many  rubber  plants, 
but  something  must  be  done  by  the  officials  to  conserve 
them  or   this  valuable  asset  will  be  lost  irrevocably. 

Most  of  the  inhabitants  are  of  the  Bantu-Negro  stock, 
and  along  the  coast  the  natives  still  retain  traces  of  the 
influence  of  the  successful  Christian  propaganda  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  "Crucifixes  are 
used  as  potent  fetish  charms  or  as  symbols  of  power 
passing  down  from  chief  to  chief;  whilst  every  native 
has  a  'Santu'  or  Christian  name  and  is  dubbed  dom  or 
dona."  In  the  east  of  the  province  there  are  settle- 
ments of  Boers,  numbering  some  two  thousand  persons, 
and  along  the  coast  there  are  a  good  many  whites, 
most  of  them  Portuguese. 

Angola  is  rich  in  its  agricultural  and  mineral  possi- 
bilities, which  have  been  exploited  in  a  way,  although 
the  prosperity  still  depends  upon  "jungle  products." 
Copper,  iron,  petroleum,  gold,  and  rock-salt  are  to  be 
had  in  quantities,  and  the  native  blacksmiths  have 
a  well  deserved  reputation  for  their  good  work. 

There  are  plenty  of  steamship  lines,  both  to  Euro- 


WESTERN    AFRICA  187 

pean  ports  and  coastwise.  The  railway,  about  three 
hundred  miles  in  length,  from  Loando  to  Ambaca  and 
Malanje,  is  notorious  as  being  the  most  costly  of  the 
tropical  Africa  lines;  it  cost  something  like  $45,000  per 
mile.  The  original  plan  was  to  carry  this  railway 
right  across  Africa  to  Mozambique,  thus  linking  up 
the  Portuguese  colonies  on  the  east  and  the  west  of 
the  continent;  but  this  project  has  been  given  up, 
for  the  time  being,  certainly.  There  is  another  rail- 
way from  Lobita  Bay  towards  the  Kongo-Rhodesia 
frontier;  this  is  a  British  enterprise.  Besides  these, 
there  are  a  few  short,  local,  industrial  lines.  The  old 
caravan  routes  and  ox-cart  roads  are  still  used,  and 
oxen  are  much  liked  as  saddle-animals.  The  history 
of  this  colony  connects  it  with  that  most  interesting 
period,  the  fifteenth  century,  of  Portuguese  adventure. 
After  recovering  from  the  effects  of  the  blow  which  the 
aboUtion  of  negro  slavery  dealt,  the  agricultural  resources 
have  been  better  exploited  and  merchants  from  Brazil 
have  figured  extensively  in  the  development  of  the 
coimtry.  The  miHtary,  punitive  expeditions  of  the  Por- 
tuguese against  the  turbulent  natives,  notoriously  the 
Kunahamas,  make  an  especially  interesting  chapter  in 
the  history. 

German  South  West  Africa.  Before  discussing  this 
large  territory  a  few  words  may  be  said  about  the  thriv- 
ing little  British  settlement,  Walfish  Bay,  just  north 
of  the  Tropic  of  Capricorn.  It  is  officially  a  part  of  the 
Union  of  South  Africa,  having  been  annexed  to  Cape 
Colony  in  1884.  The  harbour  is  the  finest  along  the 
coast   for  a  thousand  miles,  and  the  acumen  of  the 


l88  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

British  authorities  in  securing  it  is  entitled  to  praise. 
The  colony,  if  we  may  properly  call  it  such,  is  only 
430  square  miles  in  area,  and  in  1904  had  a  population 
of  997,  of  whom  144  were  Europeans.  It  exists  more  as 
a  fitting-out  place  for  whalers  than  anything  else  (hence 
its  name),  although  it  does  some  trade  with  the  people 
of  the  surrounding  German  territory.  This  concludes 
the  sketch  of  Great  Britain's  western  African  domin- 
ions, for  we  are  now  in  touch  with  the  South  African 
states,  which  are  to  be  the  subject  of  another  chapter. 
The  great  German  colony,  of  some  three  hundred 
and  twenty-five  thousand  square  miles  in  area,  is  but 
sparsely  populated,  for  in  1903  it  was  estimated  that 
there  were  but  few  more  than  two  hundred  thousand  in- 
habitants, the  natives  being  Bantu-Negroes  and  Hotten- 
tots. There  were  some  seven  thousand  Europeans  and 
a  garrison;  most  of  them  were  Germans.  South  West 
Africa  is  the  only  one  of  Germany's  African  possessions 
that  is  suited  to  white  colonisation,  and  therefore  it  is 
likely  to  develop  along  satisfactory  lines.  There  are 
no  good  harbours,  and  the  only  suitable  one,  Swakop- 
mund,  is  an  artificial  port  on  the  north  bank  of  the 
Swakop  River,  the  southern  bank  belonging  to  Walfish 
Bay.  Just  back  of  the  coast-line  is  a  mountain  range 
having  some  peaks  of  respectable  altitude,  such  as  Mt. 
Omatako,  nearly  nine  thousand  feet.  In  the  northern 
part  of  the  colony  there  is  some  excellent  grazing  land. 
Some  of  the  rivers  are  sizeable,  but  those  of  importance 
come  from  beyond  German  territory.  The  large  game 
has  been  nearly  exhausted,  but  antelopes  are  still  plenti- 
ful, and  rabbits  also.    The  flora  presents  no  aspects  at 


WESTERN    AFRICA  189 

all  strange  and  is  just  what  might  be  expected;  the  ana 
tree  (Acacia  albida)  may  be  specifically  mentioned  as 
its  seeds  are  much  liked  by  all  domestic  animals.  There 
is  a  narrow  gauge  (one  metre)  railway  from  Swakopmund 
to  Windhoek  (the  capital),  237  miles;  another  from  the 
former  place  to  Grootfontein,  400  miles,  to  develop  the 
Otavi.  At  one  place  this  line  reaches  an  altitude  of 
5213  feet  above  sea-level.  Another  railway,  of  the 
standard  South  African  gauge  (3  ft.  6  in.),  has  been 
built  from  Liideritz  to  Keetmanshoop,  with  the  expecta- 
tion of  connecting  with  the  British  systems  at  Kimberley, 
Orange  Free  State;  and  a  branch  goes  from  Seeheim 
to  Kalkfontein.  The  history  of  this  colony  will  give 
particular  attention  to  the  revolts  of  native  tribes,  in 
1903  to  1907,  that  caused  the  Germans  much  trouble,  — 
and  of  course  involved  enormous  expense  in  money 
and  caused  the  loss  of  many  precious  lives.  These 
wars  of  punishment  and  suppression  were  against  the 
BondeLzwarts,  the  Hereros,  and  the  Hottentots. 


CHAPTER  XII 

SOUTH  AFRICA 

IN  this  chapter  we  have  to  discuss  British  possessions 
only:  the  Union  of  South  Africa  and  Rhodesia. 
The  latter  for  certain  internal  reasons — as  will  appear — 
has  decided  not  to  join  the  Union  just  yet,  although 
it  is  quite  safe  to  say  that  she  will  do  so  erelong.  When 
it  was  first  proposed  to  unite  the  British  South  African 
colonies  into  a  Commonwealth  the  name,  the  United 
States  of  South  Africa,  was  suggested  by  some;  but 
this  was  rejected,  and  we  are  of  the  opinion  that  this 
rejection  was  wisely  taken.  What  with  the  United 
States  of  America,  the  United  States  of  Brazil,  the 
United  States  of  Colombia,  the  United  States  of  Mexico, 
and  the  United  States  of  Venezuela,  we  now  have  quite 
enough  of  these  "United  States,"  and,  besides,  the  title 
has  come  to  suggest  a  union  of  states  in  an  independent 
republic.  The  Union  of  South  Africa  was  duly  carried 
into  effect  on  May  31,  19 10;  the  first  General  Election 
was  held  in  September,  1910,  and  the  Union  Parlia- 
ment was  opened  in  the  first  week  of  November  by  the 
Duke  of  Connaught,  to  whom  King  George  delegated 
the  office  that  he  had  hoped,  before  his  father's  death, 
to  perform  himself.  The  Union  Parliament  held  its 
first  session  and  adjourned  before  the  close  of  the  year 
1910,  and  the  course,  which  the  business  considered  took, 

190 


SOUTHAFRICA  IQI 

served  to  show  that  the  working  majority  secured  by 
General  Botha  at  the  elections  was  quite  strong  enough 
to  effect  all  the  purposes  of  efficient  government;  but 
at  the  same  time  the  opposition  led  by  Dr.  Jameson 
evinced  sufficient  force  to  ensure  that  check  which  is 
desirable  in  every  legislative  body. 

When  the  settlers  in  Rhodesia  were  called  upon  to 
express  themselves  as  in  favour  of  or  opposed  to  enter- 
ing the  Union,  they  decided  that  their  province  was 
still  too  immature.  It  is  yet  in  its  childhood,  although 
growing  in  a  way  that  gives  promise  of  a  great  future 
which  will  fully  justify  the  prescience  of  the  man  Cecil 
Rhodes.  The  province  does  not  desire  incorporation 
with  the  Union  at  present,  not  on  account  of  any  dis- 
approval of  the  plan  or  of  unfriendliness  towards  the 
movement  for  which  it  stands,  but  because  of  a  modest 
sense  of  immaturity.  She  looks  forward  to  enter  later, 
when  she  can  be  an  effective  unit  and  not  a  dependency; 
and  this  we  are  confident  is  a  reasonable  and  poUtic 
opinion. 

With  this  by  way  of  introduction,  let  us  now  proceed 
to  consider  the  units  which  have  now  coalesced  into 
another  great  British  Commonwealth.  Cape  Colony, 
officially  styled  "Province  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope," 
is  at  the  extreme  southern  end  of  the  African  continent, 
and  has  been  a  British  province  since  1806.  Its  name, 
of  course,  comes  from  the  cape,  which  King  John  II 
of  Portugal  declared  should  be  considered  a  promise  of 
Good,  and  not  the  "Stormy  Point!"  (See  Chapter  I.) 
It  was  near  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  that  the  Hollanders 
made    their    first    settlements   in    1652.     in  1686  the 


192  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Dutch  colony  was  materially  increased  in  numbers  and 
greatly  helped,  both  physically  and  spiritually,  by  the 
arrival  of  a  number  of  French  Protestant  refugees,  who 
felt  themselves  driven  from  home  by  the  revocation  of 
the  Edict  of  Nantes,  which  Henry  IV  had  signed  on 
April  13,  1598,  and  to  which  the  Huguenots  had  pinned 
their  faith,  believing  that  they  were  assured  of  religious 
liberty,  quiet,  and  prosperity  under  the  protection  of  a 
law  expressly  declared  to  be  perpetual  and  irrevocable. 
But  subsequent  legislation  in  South  Africa,  unfair  and 
invidious,  caused  the  Huguenots  to  lose  their  identity, 
and  before  long  all  knowledge  of  French  disappeared. 

The  advent  of  Europeans  had  one  most  disastrous 
effect  upon  the  natives  of  South  Africa:  the  introduction 
of  smallpox  worked  havoc  amongst  them;  whole  tribes 
of  Hottentots  were  destroyed  by  the  scourge  between 
1 7 13  and  1755.  The  attitude  of  the  Hollanders  towards 
the  natives  was  not  marked  by  great  consideration  in 
many  ways;  they  were  overbearing  and  too  frequently 
unjust.  On  the  other  hand,  however,  it  must  be  said 
that  the  Hollanders  themselves  received  but  little  con- 
sideration from  the  Dutch  East  India  Company,  "which 
closed  the  colony  against  free  immigration,  kept  the 
whole  of  the  trade  in  its  own  hands,  combined  the  ad- 
ministrative, legislative,  and  judicial  powers  in  one  body, 
prescribed  to  the  farmers  the  nature  of  the  crops  they 
were  to  grow,  demanded  from  them  a  large  part  of  their 
produce,  and  harassed  them  with  other  exactions  tend- 
ing to  discourage  industry  and  enterprise."  The  reader 
is  recommended  to  look  at  the  article  "South  Africa" 
in  the  eleventh  edition  of  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica, 


Copyright,  Underwood  is"  Underwood,  .V.  1'. 

Stkeet  in  Hanovek,  Cape  Colony 


SOUTH    AFRICA  I93 

especially  that  part  of  it  which  treats  of  the  methods 
and  results  of  Dutch  colonial  government  in  their 
broadest  aspect.  We  pass  on  to  the  time,  1814,  when, 
after  various  vicissitudes  of  war,  the  colony  was 
ceded  outright  to  Great  Britain.  At  that  time  the 
colony  extended  northward  to  what  was  called  Bush- 
mansland;  it  was  about  one  hundred  and  twenty 
thousand  square  miles  in  area  and  had  a  population 
of  only  some  sixty  thousand,  made  up  of  twenty-seven 
thousand  whites,  seventeen  thousand  free  Hottentots, 
and  sixteen  thousand  slaves.  If  space  permitted,  we 
should  like  to  speak  of  the  various  Kafl&r  and  Zulu 
wars,  because  they  have  had  an  effect  in  moulding  the 
Union  of  South  Africa  but  the  discussion  must  be 
omitted. 

When  once  the  barren  shore  belt  is  passed,  the  interior 
of  the  country  is  found  to  be  attractive  in  many  ways. 
There  are  some  high  mountains  in  the  country;  for  ex- 
ample. Compass  Berg,  eighty-five  hundred  feet.  Table 
Mountain,  overlooking  Cape  Town,  is  so  well  known, 
both  physically  and  in  legend,  that  it  is  unnecessary  to 
speak  of  it.  Cape  Colony  is  famous  for  its  healthful  and 
health-giving  climate:  healthful  in  that  there  is  so  little 
sickness;  health-giving,  because  those  who  go  there  ill 
so  quickly  recover.  Some  of  the  wild  animals  that 
were  plentiful  in  early  days  —  e.g.,  quagga,  blaauwbok, 
and  others  —  have  been  exterminated;  while  the  largest 
game  —  elephants,  giraffe,  Hons,  etc.  —  have  been  driven 
by  hunters  and  the  advance  of  civilisation  beyond  the 
borders  of  the  colony.  The  flora  is  rich  and  varied  in 
the  coast  districts,  but  somewhat  sparse  in  the  interior; 


194  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

cultivated  fields  are  satisfactorily  thrifty.  It  was  the 
Hollanders  who  invented  the  name  Hottentot*  for  the 
Quaequae,  who,  with  Bushmen  (their  kinsmen),  were 
the  natives  when  the  first  Europeans  arrived.  Farther 
north  were  various  other  tribes,  the  principal  ones 
being  Kaffirs  (Bechuanas  and  others).  The  bulk  of 
the  population,  outside  of  the  pure  European  stock,  is 
a  most  heterogeneous  mixture  of  Dutch,  Hottentot,  and 
Kaffir  blood.  In  1865  the  first  proper  census  was  taken, 
and  then  the  area  of  the  colony  was  195,000  square 
miles  (this  excluded  the  "Native  Territories")  and 
the  population,  566,158.  The  1904  census  figures  are: 
area,  276,995  square  miles;  population,  2,409,804.  The 
principal  towns  are  on  the  coast.  Cape  Town  is  the 
capital,  both  of  the  province  and  of  the  Union. 

Agriculture,  viticulture,  fruit  growing,  mining,  live- 
stock rearing  are  all  important  and  constantly  expand- 
ing industries,  the  volume  of  trade  rising  into  many 
hundreds  of  millions  of  pounds  sterling.  There  are  over 
four  thousand  miles  of  railway  in  the  country,  the  South 
and  Central  African  gauge  being  three  feet  six  inches. 
These  may  be  divided,  for  a  general  consideration,  into 
three  systems:  Western,  Midland,  and  Eastern.  The 
first  is  the  southern  section  of  the  Cape  to  Cairo  Rail- 
way, from  Cape  Town  to  the  Belgian  Kongo  frontier, 
about  two  thousand  miles.  The  main  line  has  various 
branches,  both  in  the  Province  of  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  and  in  the  northern  provinces;  one  of  the  latter 
from  Salisbury,  Mashonaland  (Rhodesia)  to  Beira  (Por- 

*  Derived  from  hot-en-tot;  the  first  and  third  syllables  being  an  imita- 
tion of  native  "clicks"  in  speech,  akin  to  stammering;  the  Dutch  en 
equalling  the  English  and. 


SOUTH    AFRICA  195 

tuguese),  the  last-mentioned  place  being  2037  miles  by 
rail  from  Cape  Town.  The  second  system  starts  at  Port 
Elizabeth,  Cape  Colony,  the  main  line  going  north  to 
Pretoria,  Transvaal,  741  miles,  with  one  branch  east  via 
Ladysmith  to  Durban,  Natal;  another  connects  the  first 
and  second  systems,  and  there  are  other  branches  and 
independent  lines.  The  third  section  starts  from  East 
London  and,  cutting  across  the  other  two,  reaches  into 
the  Orange  Free  State,  etc.  There  are,  besides,  a 
number  of  east  and  west  lines,  and  many  short  ones  in 
the  various  southern  and  eastern  parts  of  the  colony. 
In  1 9 10  Cape  Colony  entered  the  Union  of  South  Africa 
as  an  original  province. 

Natal  is  one  of  the  maritime  provinces  of  the  Union. 
Its  area  is  35,371  square  miles.  The  province  is  divided 
into  two  districts:  Natal  proper,  24,910  square  miles,  and 
Zululand,  10,461  square  miles.  The  former  is  especially 
noted  for  the  steepness  of  the  earth's  surface.  The 
rivers  plunge  down  eight  thousand  feet  or  more  in  a 
course  of  about  two  hundred  miles;  they  are,  of  course, 
not  navigable.  The  climate  is  wonderfully  varied,  but 
nowhere  actually  unhealthy.  It  has  been  compared, 
quite  justly,  with  that  of  northern  Italy,  notwithstand- 
ing that  in  the  lower  valleys  and  along  the  coast 
there  is  much  humidity.  As  is  to  be  expected  in 
such  a  coimtry  of  marked  difference  in  physical 
characteristics,  there  is  an  extremely  wide  range  in 
the  flora.  The  fauna  is  now  restricted  to  the 
smaller  animals  only;  all  the  larger  ones,  such  as  ele- 
phants, giraffes,  buffaloes,  ostriches,  and  hosts  of  others, 
having  been  exterminated  or  driven  out.    The  aborigi- 


196  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

nal  inhabitants  were  almost  annihilated  by  the  Zulus 
about  a  hundred  years  ago.  The  official  estimate  of 
the  population  of  Natal  proper,  on  December  31,  1908, 
was:  Europeans,  91,443;  natives  (including  "mixed  and 
others")?  998,264;  Asiatics,  116,679;  total,  1,206,388. 
The  task  of  suppressing  the  internecine  wars  and  that 
of  subduing  the  Zulus  were  severe  and  expensive  for 
the  British.  The  capital  of  the  province  is  Pieter- 
maritzburg,  the  long,  awkward  name  being  abbreviated 
by  the  foreigners  to  "P.  M.  B." 

Natal  is  well  equipped  as  to  means  of  communication. 
From  Durban  there  are  steamers  via  Suez  or  via  Cape 
Town  to  Europe,  calling  at  many  intermediate  ports 
as  well  as  lines  direct  to  London.  There  are,  too, 
many  coastwise  lines.  The  first  railway  laid  in  South 
Africa  was  that  from  The  Point  harbour,  to  Durban, 
two  miles.  There  is  now  the  standard  gauge  (3  ft.  6  in.) 
railway  from  Durban,  via  Johannesburg,  Pretoria,  Eam- 
berley,  to  Delagoa  Bay  (Lourengo  Marques,  Portuguese), 
eight  hundred  and  sixty  miles,  with  many  branches  and 
subsidiary  lines.  There  are,  also,  from  Durban  coast- 
lines north  and  south;  the  former  into  the  Santa  Lucia 
coalfields,  the  latter  to  Port  Shepstone,  with  a  branch. 
The  diversity  in  soil  and  climate  results  in  great  variety 
of  agricultural  products.  There  are,  too,  many  livestock 
and  horse-breeding  ranches.  The  output  from  the  latter 
cannot  yet  be  very  large,  however,  for  it  will  be  remem- 
bered that  during  the  last  Boer  war  the  British  army 
officers  were  compelled  to  go  to  all  parts  of  the  world, 
including  America,  to  secure  needed  "  remounts." 

Zululand,  the  "Province  of  Zulu"  as  it  was  officially 


Copyright,  L  ndeni:)od  i*  U ndenvond .  .V.  1'. 

TiiK    Town  Hail,  Di  kban.  Natal 
KaJjiT-draun  jinrikisba  in  foreground 


SOUTH    AFRICA  197 

designated  from  1898  to  1910,  is  now  a  part  of  the  Natal 
province  of  the  Union  of  South  Africa.  It  is  a  region 
of  hills  and  mountain  plateaus,  with  many  shallow 
lagoons  along  the  coast.  The  uplands  are  very  high, 
rising  to  4500  feet  above  sea-level.  The  area  is  10,450 
square  miles;  the  population  (in  1904)  was  about  230,000 
only,  including  1693  whites.  The  flora  presents  nothing 
sufficiently  marked  to  call  for  special  comment.  Of  the 
fauna  it  may  be  said  that  the  lion  and  elephant,  with 
a  goodly  niunber  of  the  other  larger  animals,  reappear. 
Although  there  are  two  hundred  and  ten  miles  of  sea- 
coast,  there  is  no  good  harbour.  There  is  fairly  safe 
holding-ground  at  the  mouth  of  the  Tugela  River, 
except  when  westerly  winds  blow;  but  this  is  nearly 
a  mile  off  shore.  The  one  railway,  Durban-St.  Lucia, 
has  been  already  mentioned.  Good  roads  are  now 
foimd  everywhere.  The  Zulus  afford  to  the  student 
of  history  an  absorbingly  interesting  subject,  and  the 
various  wars  between  them  and  the  British  fill  some  of 
the  most  thrilling  of  South  Africa's  records. 

The  native  name  for  the  province  of  Swaziland  is 
Pimgwane.  Its  area  is  only  6536  square  miles  and  the 
population  (in  1904)  numbered  85,484,  of  whom  898 
were  white.  The  natives  are  all  Ama-Swazi  Bantus 
and  are  closely  allied  to  the  Zulus.  The  different 
sections  of  the  country  are  spoken  of  as  the  high  veld, 
western,  average  altitude  forty-five  hundred  feet;  the 
middle  veld,  about  twenty -five  hundred  feet;  and  the 
low  veld,  eastern,  about  one  thousand  feet,  and  reach- 
ing to  the  Lebombo  Mountains,  which  are  flat-topped 
and  do  not  rise  over  two  thousand  feet  anywhere. 


198  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

The  province  is  well  watered.  The  rivers  all  empty 
into  Delagoa  Bay.  The  flora  and  fauna  call  for  no 
special  remark,  since  they  present  no  feature  that  in  any 
way  distinguishes  them  from  those  of  the  rest  of  this 
part  of  the  country.  Embabaan,  the  Anglicised  form  of 
the  native  M'babane,  is  the  capital  and  is  forty-three 
hundred  feet  above  the  sea.  The  climate  is  most 
healthy.  There  is  a  railway  to  the  town  of  Lourengo 
Marques,  in  Portuguese  East  Africa,  which  crosses  the 
frontier  forty-seven  miles  east  of  Embabaan;  it  is  the 
eastern  link  in  the  direct  Johannesburg-Delagoa  Bay 
line.  There  are  a  number  of  good  roads  in  sections 
where  development  calls  for  them.  The  soil  being 
generally  fertile  and  the  natives  having  a  disposition 
thereto,  agriculture  is  of  importance  and  stock-raising 
is  a  considerable  industry.  Gold,  tin,  and  coal  mining 
are  now  receiving  some  profitable  attention.  To  the 
ethnologist  there  is  much  that  appeals  in  the  history 
of  the  Ama-Swazi  tribes  and  their  enemies,  the  Bantus 
and  Zulus. 

Basutoland,  ofl5cially  "The  Territory  of  Basutoland," 
is  an  inland  state  and  crown  colony  of  Great  Britain. 
(Area,  10,293  square  miles;  population,  1904,  348,848.) 
The  native  name  is  Lesuto,  and  the  country  is  a  part  of 
the  southeastern  ridge  of  the  great  South  African  table- 
land, having  a  mean  elevation  of  six  thousand  feet.  Its 
climate  may  easily  be  imagined.  The  famous  Draken- 
berg  range  attains  its  greatest  elevation  on  the  Basuto- 
land-Niger  frontier,  where  there  are  peaks  towering  up 
ten  thousand  feet  and  more.  It  is  a  great  and  beautiful 
country,  in  its  scenery  fully  deserving  the  title  "The 


SOUTH    AFRICA  199 

Switzerland  of  South  Africa,"  which  has  been  given  it; 
and  not  only  physically  but  industrially  is  it  coming  to 
approach  Switzerland.  One  conspicuous  characteristic 
— for  Africa — is  the  fact  that  the  four  seasons,  as  we  know 
them  in  the  higher  latitudes  of  the  north  temperate 
zone,  are  sharply  defined.  These  are,  of  course,  just 
the  reverse  of  ours,  if  we  adhere  strictly  to  our  months 
by  name;  for  Basutoland's  July  is  the  beginning  of  mid- 
winter snow  and  ice,  while  Christmas  is  celebrated 
under  the  broiling  sun  of  midsummer!  There  are  trees, 
but  no  forests;  there  are  charming  heaths,  and  higher 
up  again  the  alpine  flora  is  very  beautiful.  Compara- 
tively few  wild  animals  are  seen,  and  none  of  them  are 
very  large. 

This  province  is  one  of  the  greatest  grain  districts  of 
South  Africa,  and  if  the  promise  of  development  is  kept, 
it  will  not  be  necessary  to  retain  the  modifying  "South" 
very  long.  Excellent  ponies,  descended  from  some  Shet- 
lands  that  ran  wild  over  half  a  century  ago,  are  reared 
and  lately  the  strain  has  been  highly  improved  by  the 
introduction  of  Arab  stallions.  Communication  depends 
upon  the  highroads,  which  are  in  excellent  condition; 
none  of  the  rivers  are  navigable.  A  short  railway  from 
Naseru,  the  capital,  connects  with  the  trunk  line  from 
Bloemfontein  to  Ladysmith.  Rather  exceptional  educa- 
tional faciUties  are  supplied  and  availed  of;  but  the 
schools,  as  yet,  are  those  founded  by  missionary  so- 
cieties, although  the  Government  contributes,  without 
sectarian  discrimination,  towards  maintenance.  Social 
conditions  among  the  natives  are  on  a  much  higher 
plane  than  is  customarily  found  in  South  Africa. 


200  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Orange  Free  State  was,  from  1854  to  1900,  an  inde- 
pendent republic.  From  May,  1900,  to  June,  1910,  it 
was  known  as  the  Orange  River  Colony,  and  since  the 
last  date  it  has  formed  a  province  of  the  Union  of  South 
Africa  as  the  Orange  Free  State,  although  why  the 
"Free"  is  retained  it  is  not  easy  to  say.  It  lies  north 
of  the  Orange  River  and  south  of  the  Vaal.  It  is  a  part 
of  the  great  interior  tableland  and  has  an  elevation  of 
some  four  to  five  thousand  feet.  Mont  aux  Sources, 
eleven  thousand  feet,  and  the  highest  peak  in  South 
Africa,  is  partly  in  this  province;  there  are,  besides,  a 
number  of  very  respectable  mountains  entirely  within  the 
borders.  Generally  speaking,  the  province  is  a  great  tree- 
less plain,  strikingly  uneven  in  its  surface.  The  area  is 
50,392  square  miles,  and  the  population  229,149,  at  the 
last  census.  The  cUmate  is  not  comparable  with  that  of 
Basutoland,  although  it  is  very  healthy,  for  there  are 
trying,  hot  winds  and  occasionally  bad  dust-storms. 
The  flora  is  just  what  one  would  expect  to  find  in  such 
high  lands  when  rain  is  scarce.  The  tobacco  plant 
grows  wild.  A  great  change  has  taken  place  in  the 
faima  during  a  hundred  years.  Big  game,  that  was 
plentiful  during  the  early  days  of  the  Boers,  has  dis- 
appeared, and  what  small  game  there  is  does  not 
appeal  strongly  to  the  sportsman. 

The  Bushmen  were,  probably,  the  autochthons,  as 
in  many  other  parts  of  South  Africa;  then  came  the 
Hottentots,  and  afterwards  the  Bantu-Negroes  of  the 
Bechuana  tribes.  Representatives  of  all  these  are  seen, 
and  there  are,  besides,  many  "mixed."  It  may  be 
mentioned  here  that  there  are  in  various  parts  of  South 


SOUTH    AFRICA  20I 

Africa  graffiti  in  caves  and  on  rocks  which  show  that 
the  Bushmen  were  at  one  time  in  regions  where  they 
are  not  now  found  and  where  they  do  not  appear  to 
have  been  for  a  very  long  time. 

This  province  has  an  extensive  system  of  railways; 
they  are  owned  by  the  state  and  are  all  of  the  standard 
South  African  gauge  (3  ft.  6  in.).  One  division  connects 
the  colony  with  Cape  Town  by  the  trunk  line,  Cape  to 
Cairo,  etc.  The  other  is  the  Natal  trunk  line,  northeast 
and  southwest.  The  two  systems  are  interlocked  in 
a  double  way.  Agriculture  is  the  most  important 
industry;  next  come  sheep  and  stock  raising.  "  Under 
the  provisions  of  a  Land  Settlement  Ordinance  of  1902 
over  1,500,000  acres  of  crown  land  had  been,  by  1907, 
allotted,  and  in  September,  1909,  there  were  642  families, 
of  whom  over  570  were  British,  settled  on  that  land. 
In  1907  a  Land  Settlement  Board  was  created  to  deal 
with  the  affairs  of  these  settlers.  At  the  end  of  five 
years  the  Board  was  to  hand  over  its  duties  to  the  Gov- 
ernment." After  the  industries  which  have  been  men- 
tioned, comes  diamond  mining;  in  1909  the  value  of 
the  stones  dug  was  considerably  over  $5,000,000.  Coal 
mining  has  attained  importance.  Gold  and  iron  deposits 
have  been  found,  but  these  are  not  worked  to  an  appre- 
ciable extent. 

Transvaal;  literally  "Across  the  Vaal,"  because  this 
inland  province  lies  north  of,  or  beyond  from,  Cape  Colony, 
the  Vaal  River,  and  south  of  the  Limpopo.  Its  boundaries 
have  already  been  given  indirectly,  save  the  northern  one, 
which  joins  Rhodesia,  and  that  part  of  the  western  line 
which  adjoins  the  Bechuanaland  Protectorate.    These 


202  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

h 

frontiers,  with  the  exception  of  a  little  of  the  south- 
Western  one,  are  well-defined  natural  features.  The 
area  is  111,196  square  miles  and  the  population,  on 
April  17,  1904,  when  the  first  complete  census  was 
taken,  was  1,269,951.  This  latter  number  included  8215 
British  soldiers  in  garrisons,  and  of  that  total  a  little 
over  twenty  per  cent,  were  European  or  white;  the 
white  people  being  British  or  Hollanders.  Most  of 
the  British  subjects  are  gathered  into  the  towns,  where 
practically  all  the  white  foreigners  are  to  be  found; 
while  the  Hollanders,  Boers,  are  mainly  farmers  and 
stockmen.  The  natives  are  of  the  Bantu-Negro  race, 
chiefly  from  Basuto,  Bechuana,  Bavenda,  and  Xosa- 
Zulu  tribes — all  immigrants.  Just  who  the  autochthons 
were  will  probably  never  be  known,  for  in  the  second  dec- 
ade of  the  nineteenth  century  such  havoc  was  wrought 
among  the  natives  by  the  Zulu  chief  Mosilikatze  that 
they  were  practically  annihilated;  and  after  that,  in 
addition  to  the  immigrants  already  mentioned,  there 
came  in  from  the  east  and  southeast  Swazi,  Shangaan, 
and  people  of  other  tribes. 

The  province  in  the  east  is  mountainous,  but  in  the 
west  it  is  a  part  of  the  main  tableland  of  South  Central 
Africa.  "The  true  veld,  extending  east  to  west  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty  miles  and  north  to  south  one  hundred 
miles,  consists  of  rolling  grass-covered  downs  absolutely 
treeless,  save  where,  as  at  Johannesburg,  plantations  have 
been  made  by  man,  the  crests  of  the  rolls  being  known 
as  builts  and  the  hollows  as  laagtes  or  pleys.  The  surface 
is  occasionally  broken  by  Kopjes  —  either  table-shaped 
or  pointed  —  rising  sometimes  one  hundred  feet  above 


SOUTH    AFRICA  203 

the  general  level.  Small  springs  of  fresh  water  are  fre- 
quent and  there  are  several  shallow  lakes  or  pans  —  flat- 
bottomed  depressions  with  no  outlet.  The  largest  of 
these  pans,  Lake  Chrissie,  some  five  miles  long  by  one 
mile  broad,  is  in  the  southeastern  part  of  the  high 
veld.  The  water  in  the  pans  is  usually  brackish.  The  * 
middle  veld  is  marked  by  long,  low,  stony  ridges,  known 
as  rands,  and  these  rands  and  the  kopjes  are  often 
covered  with  scrub,  while  mimosa  trees  are- found  in 
the  river  valleys." 

The  Transvaal  has  a  healthy,  invigorating  chmate; 
that  of  the  high  veld  being  among  the  finest  in  the  world ; 
for  it  is  unusually  dry  because  of  the  desiccating  influence 
of  the  Kalahari  Desert  (Bechuanaland)  on  the  west  and 
of  the  Drakenbergs  on  the  east,  which  intercept  the  . 
damp  air  from  the  Indian  Ocean.  But  the  daily  range  • 
of  the  temperature  is  sometimes  startling;  in  winter 
the  mercury  may  be  at  100°  F.  in  the  shade  at  noon  and 
the  succeeding  night  ice  will  form !  The  mean  tempera- 
ture in  siunmer  (October  to  April)  is  about  73°  F.,  that 
of  winter  about  53°.  The  flora  is  most  interesting  and 
still  appeals  to  the  investigating  botanist;  but  its  greatest 
practical  value  lies  in  the  excellent,  short,  sweet 
grasses  so  abundantly  supplied  and  so  admirably  suited 
to  domestic  animals.  The  fauna  has  been  almost 
metamorphosed  since  the  advent  of  Europeans.  The 
indiscriminate  slaughter  of  the  larger  animals  —  lion, 
elephant,  rhinoceros,  giraffe,  hippopotamus,  crocodile,  — 
has  nearly  exterminated  them ;  but  there  are  still  many 
small  wild  animals  whose  habits  have  undergone  change 
since  the  removal  of  those  that  preyed  upon  them. 


204  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Noxious  insects,  such  as  the  tsetse  fly,  ticks  (there  are 
at  least  six  species),  mosquitoes,  locusts,  and  ants,  are 
very  common. 

The  administrative  divisions  and  their  measures,  the 
government,  the  school  system,  industrial  enterprises, 
and  other  topics  must  be  passed  with  the  comment 
that  they  are  what  is  to  be  expected  in  an  intelligently 
governed  British  colony,  when  the  economic  and  political 
value  of  that  colony  is  thoroughly  appreciated,  as  is 
the  case  with  the  Transvaal.  The  railway  development 
has  reached  remarkable  proportions.  There  are  almost 
innumerable  short,  private  lines  built  to  exploit  some 
particular  industry;  of  these  no  account  is  taken  here. 
The  principal  (trunk)  lines  of  the  standard  South  African 
gauge  all  converge  at  Johannesburg.  The  following 
table  gives  the  distances  from  that  city  to  other  places 
in  South  Africa  (for  projected  routes,  shortening  the 
journey  between  Europe  and  Johannesburg,  see  the 
Geographical  Journaly  December,  1910). 

INLAND   CENTRES  SEAPORTS 

Miles  Miles 

To  Pretoria 46    To  Cape  Town  (via  Kimberiey) 957 

"   Kimberiey 310      "      "         "      (via  Bloemfontein ) . . .  1013 

"  Bloemfontein 263      "  Port  Elizabeth 714 

"   Bulawayo  (via  Fourteen  Streams)  979      "   East  London 665 

"   Salisbury  (  "  "  "       )  1279      "  Durban 483 

"  Louren^o  Marques  (via  Pretoria)    396 

Other  important  lines  are:  east  via  Pretoria-Delagoa 
Bay  railway;  from  Witbank  to  Brakpan;  Krugersdorp  to 
Zeerust;  Pretoria  to  Rustenberg;  Pretoria  to  Pietersburg; 
the  "Selati"  railway  from  Komati  Poort  to  Leydsdorp 
and  on  to  the  Limpopo  River;  Belfast  to  Lydenburg; 
Potchefstroom    to    Lichtenburg.    Telegraph    lines    are 


o 


SOUTH    AFRICA  205 

extended  all  over  the  province  and  are  connected  with 
ocean  cables  at  one  or  the  other  of  several  seaports. 
Inland  communication  is  had  with  British  Central 
Africa  and  Ujiji,  on  Lake  Tanganyika,  through  Rhodesia. 
This  gives  access  to  German  East  Africa  and  its  principal 
port  of  entry,  Dar  es-Salaam. 

The  postal  service  is  well  organised  and  in  some 
parts  of  the  Pietersburg  district  zebras  are  hitched 
into  mailcarts  for  rural  delivery.  The  mineral  re- 
sources of  the  province  would  demand  several  long 
chapters  for  themselves  if  they  were  discussed 
thoroughly.  The  famous  "Rand  Reefs,"  along  the 
Witwatersrand,  are  known  in  every  stock  exchange  of 
the  world.  Diamonds,  coal  and  other  minerals,  iron 
and  copper  ores — all  these  are  important.  Agriculture 
yields  precedence  to  mining,  although  the  development 
in  farming  and  stock-raising  is  rapidly  pushing  these 
industries  to  the  front.  Fruit  growing  is  a  thri\dng 
occupation,  for  the  climate  and  soil  in  many  places  are 
admirably  suited  for  this  purpose.  The  crown  lands, 
about  twenty-one  million  acres  in  area,  are  being  wisely 
administered  and  attractive  inducements  are  held  out 
to  settlers.  The  history  of  the  colony  presents  an 
absorbingly  interesting  combination  of  romance,  matter 
of  fact,  struggle,  and  war,  but  it  fills  volumes  and 
cannot  even  be  condensed  into  part  of  a  chapter;  and 
since  it  cannot  be  given  here,  it  is  unfair  to  criticise 
either  Boer  or  British  acts. 

Griqualand  East  and  Griqualand  West  are  naturally 
parts  of  Bechuanaland.  The  former  is  known  also  as 
Kaflfraria.     Neither  one  is  a  separate  political  division, 


2o6  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

and  they  are  mentioned  here  by  name  simply  because 
of  the  importance  of  the  diamond  mines  and  because 
Kimberley,  the  chief  town  of  Griqualand  West,  is  of 
considerable  note;  it  is  the  headquarters  for  the 
diamond  miners  and  dealers.  Diamonds  were  first 
discovered  in  this  district  in  1867,  and  by  the  end  of 
1905  the  quantity  taken  out  amounted  to  thirteen  and 
one-half  tons  in  weight,  and  the  value  was  nearly  five 
hundred  million  dollars.  To  speak  of  tons  of  diamonds, 
each  ton  being  twenty-two  hundred  and  forty  pounds 
avoirdupois,  as  if  they  were  so  much  pig-iron,  must 
strike  the  reader  as  commercialising  the  jewel  in  an 
extraordinary  way.  The  history  of  Griqualand  blends 
together  accounts  of  Bushmen,  Hottentots,  Bastaards 
(the  name,  even  in  its  Dutch  form,  is  shamefully  sug- 
gestive; they  were  the  offspring  of  Hollander  fathers 
by  Hottentot  mothers,  but  were  not  cared  for  by  their 
fathers),  and  Europeans. 

The  British  Protectorate  of  Nyasaland  is  a  small 
district,  still  administered  by  a  governor,  appointed 
from  London,  with  the  assistance  of  an  executive  and 
legislative  coimcil.  It  will  eventually  become  a  part  of 
the  Union  of  South  Africa,  we  may  reasonably  assume, 
but  probably  not  until  after  Rhodesia,  with  which  it 
is  geographically  allied,  joins  that  Union.  Nyasaland 
includes  all  the  west  coast  of  Lake  Nyasa  south  of 
the  Songwe  River,  where  it  marches  with  German 
East  Africa;  the  southern  end  of  the  lake  and  up  the 
coast  of  the  lake  to  ii|°  south  latitude  where  the 
British  and  German  possessions  join ;  in  the  south  it  is 
surrounded  by  Portuguese  territory;  westward  it  projects 


SOUTH    AFRICA  207 

into  Rhodesia.  It  takes  in  the  greater  part  of  the  Shir^ 
river  basin  and  the  Shire  Highlands.  The  area  is  about 
forty  thousand  nine  hundred  and  eighty  square  miles 
and  the  population  is  estimated  at  very  nearly  one  mil- 
lion. Light  draft  steamboats  can  travel  on  the  Zambesi 
River  from  its  mouth,  at  Chinde,  to  Port  Herald  on  the 
Shire  River;  but  during  low  water  they  cannot  always 
go  quite  so  far.  There  is  a  railway  from  Port  Herald 
to  Blantyre,  the  commercial  metropolis  of  the  Shire 
Highlands.  The  Cape  to  Cairo  Railway,  which  crossed 
the  Zambesi  in  1905,  and  the  Kafukwe  in  1906,  reached 
Broken  Hill  mines  in  1907,  and  was  continued  to  the  Bel- 
gian Kongo  frontier  in  1909.  There  is  a  connecting  line 
to  Blantyre,  three  thousand  feet  above  the  sea.  The  place 
is  a  monument  to  Livingstone,  for  the  name  was  taken 
from  the  great  missionary  explorer's  birthplace,  and  the 
town  was  founded  by  the  Church  of  Scotland  Mission. 
The  history  of  the  whole  province  is  interesting  because 
of  the  connection  with  Livingstone's  name,  for  on  the 
shore  of  Lake  Nyasa  he  planted  a  mission  station  soon 
after  he  had  reached  the  lake,  from  the  south,  in  1859. 
Rhodesia,  the  name  being  a  monument  to  another 
one  man  —  of  vastly  different  metal  than  that  other  one 
man  whose  name  is  associated  with  the  adjoining  Bel- 
gian Kongo  —  who,  backed  up  by  the  British  Gov- 
ernment, was  its  founder,  Cecil  Rhodes.  It  is  a  great 
interior  possession  of  Great  Britain  in  the  southern  part 
of  Central  Africa  and  the  northern  part  of  South  Africa. 
In  extent  it  measures  some  four  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand square  miles,  or  more  than  France,  Germany,  Hol- 
land, and  Belgium  combined.     That  it  was  in  the  mind 


2o8  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

of  the  founder  of  this  great  state  to  have  it  preserve 
absolute  independence  and  become  a  separate  nation  is 
possibly  too  much  to  say;  certainly  we  cannot  now 
know.  The  Zambesi  River  naturally  divides  the  colony 
into  two  unequal  parts,  the  northern  of  which  is  again 
subdivided  into  North  West  Rhodesia  (Barotseland)  and 
North  East  Rhodesia.  In  its  northern  regions  Rhodesia 
is  a  part  of  the  Kongo  basin ;  the  rest  is  practically  all  in 
the  Zambesi  basin,  although  in  the  south  and  southeast  it 
is  drained  by  tributaries  of  the  Limpopo  River. 

The  entire  province  is  a  part  of  the  high  tableland 
of  Central  Africa.  The  colony  is  rich  in  its  fauna, 
both  the  great  beasts  and  the  small  animals.  For  the 
entomologist  there  are  yet  attractive  possibilities  of 
catching  unidentified  specimens  of  beetles,  butterflies, 
and  moths;  and  for  the  practical  entomologist  there  is 
work  to  be  done  in  exterminating  pestiferous  ants  that 
are  working  havoc.  It  may  be,  too,  that  the  ornitholo- 
gist who  makes  a  lengthy  stay  will  be  rewarded  by  the 
discovery  of  something  new.  The  flora  ranges  from  the 
tropical  through  the  subtropical  (constituting  the  greater 
part)  to  that  of  the  semi-temperate.  It  is  a  Httle  strange 
that  all  the  forest  trees  yield  timber  that  is  either  too 
hard  or  too  soft  for  practical  use;  therefore  house  lumber 
has  as  yet  to  be  imported.  The  Rhodesian  teak,  a  tree 
that  the  natives  call  Ikusi,  yields  wood  that  is  fifty  per 
cent  harder  than  the  teak  with  which  we  are  familiar. 
There  are,  too,  a  few  indigenous  fruit  trees,  the  best  of 
which  is  the  fig,  in  many  varieties.  The  blossoming  of 
the  flowering  plants  on  the  veld  is  a  pretty  phenomenon ; 
these  do  not  wait  for  the  rains,  after  the  four  to  seven 


SOUTH    AFRICA  209 

months  of  dry  weather,  but  being  mostly  bulbous  plants 
whose  tubers  have  stored  up  a  reserve  of  moisture,  they 
send  out  their  blooms  in  anticipation,  as  it  were,  of  the 
rains  that  are  soon  to  come,  and  the  store  is  sufl&cient 
to  keep  them  fresh  until  the  rains  actually  arrive,  when 
they  send  out  other  flowers. 

Southern  Rhodesia  already  has  a  very  large  percentage 
of  Europeans  in  its  population,  and  the  concentration  of 
effort  in  this  direction  is  likely  to  increase  the  ratio 
of  whites  to  black.  The  natives  belong  to  the  Bantu- 
Negro  stock.  Some  have  developed  a  limited  capacity 
for  advancing,  but  practically  all  are  yet  ruled  by  super- 
stition and  their  implicit  belief  in  spirits  —  of  all  kinds, 
beneficent  very  few,  maleficent  innumerable.  Their 
feasts  are  frequent,  misfortime  or  good  luck  being  equally 
made  the  occasion  for  eating,  drinking,  and  dancing. 
Salisbury  is  the  capital  of  Southern  Rhodesia;  it  stands 
forty-eight  hundred  and  eighty  feet  above  the  sea.  We 
are  familiar  with  the  names  of  other  Rhodesian  towns: 
Bulawayo,  near  which,  at  World's  View  in  the  Maloppo, 
is  Rhodes'  burial  place,  Umtali,  Victoria,  Melsetter,  and 
many  others. 

The  railways  are  already  in  an  advanced  state  for  a 
colony  hardly  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  old;  for 
with  the  trunk  line,  the  Cape  to  Cairo,  and  its  ramifica- 
tions, branches,  and  connections,  it  is  possible  to  reach 
almost  every  important  centre.  The  highroads  built 
and  maintained  by  the  Government,  over  four  thousand 
miles  in  length,  may  well  receive  the  admiration  of  Ameri- 
cans, and  if  they  could  be  imitated  in  this  country  it  would 
greatly  conduce  to  our  comfort.     As  yet  the  adminis- 


210  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

tration  of  Rhodesia  is  in  the  hands  of  the  British  South 
African  Company,  which  appoints  an  administrator. 
There  is  a  legislative  council,  a  majority  of  whom  are 
elected  by  the  registered  voters.  There  is  a  High 
Court  of  Justice,  with  two  judges  who  have  civil  and 
criminal  jurisdiction;  besides  these  there  are  sundry 
magistrates'  courts  throughout  the  province.  Of 
Rhodesia's  history  and  archaeology  there  is  so  much  to 
be  said,  and  it  is  so  very  interesting,  that  we  must  refer 
our  readers  to  the  bibliography  for  special  works  dealing 
with  these  subjects  at  the  length  desired. 

Barotseland.  Most  of  this  South  Central  African  coun- 
try now  forms  a  part  of  Rhodesia.  The  people  are  the 
most  important  in  this  section  of  the  world  and  are  an  in- 
teresting ethnological  study.  They  were  once  conquered 
by  Basutos  from  the  south,  but  eventually  reasserted 
their  supremacy.  The  territory  defined  as  Barotseland 
is  of  vast  area,  extending  from  the  Kwito  River  (about 
longitude  20°  E.)  on  the  west  to  the  Kafue  (Kafukwe) 
River  (about  28° E.),  and  from  the  Kongo-Zambesi  water- 
shed in  the  north  to  the  Linyante  district  of  the  Kwando 
River  basin  and  the  Zambesi  on  the  south.  The  area  of 
that  part  of  Barotseland  which  is  under  British  protection 
is  something  like  one  hundred  and  eighty  thousand 
square  miles.  There  is  excellent  pasturage,  the  cattle 
having  a  famous  reputation  for  fatness.  The  climate 
is  generally  healthy,  but  the  valleys  should  be  avoided 
by  white  settlers.  It  is  well  for  the  reader  who  is  in- 
terested in  such  topics  to  give  some  attention  to  the 
accounts  —  favourable  as  well  as  adverse  —  of  how  Brit- 
ish suzerainty  came  to  be  established  in  Barotseland. 


fr: 


D    s 


-.    CO 


S  OUTH    AFRI  CA  211 

There  are  two  sections  of  Rhodesia  which  deserve  a 
few  words  of  comment:  Mashonaland  and  Matabeleland. 
The  inhabitants  of  the  former  are  Bantu-Negroes,  whose 
name  comes  from  the  contemptuous  Amashuina,  applied 
to  them  by  the  Matabeles  (Zulus)  because  they  would 
lurk  in  caves  among  the  rocky  hills  to  escape  from 
fighting  with  the  intruders.  Although  many  of  them 
submitted  to  the  Matabeles  they  preserved  a  certain 
national  unity.  They  are  skilful  potters  and  weavers  of 
cloth  from  bark,  as  well  as  industrious  farmers.  They 
excelled  in  smelting  and  forging  iron  and  in  carving  wood. 
They  are  also  quite  musical,  and  make  a  rude  sort  of 
"piano"  with  iron  keys.  They  also  worked  in  the  gold 
diggings  and  could  even  extract  gold  from  quartz. 
The  Matabeles  got  their  name  from  a  word  which 
means  "vanishing"  or  "hidden"  because  of  the  clever 
way  they  had  of  protecting  themselves  from  their 
adversaries'  primitive  missiles  by  crouching  behind 
immense  shields  covered  with  thick  oxhide.  They  are 
a  people  of  Zulu  origin,  adept  in  the  use  of  the  assegai, 
who  were  driven  from  the  Transvaal  by  the  Boers  in 
1837;  they  crossed  the  Limpopo  River  with  a  host  re- 
cruited from  every  one  of  the  numerous  tribes  they 
had  conquered,  led  by  the  notorious  chief  Mosilikatze. 
In  the  new  territory  the  mere  name  of  that  chief  was 
sufficient  to  inspire  dread,  and  they  conquered  and 
absorbed  the  Mashona  tribes,  establishing  a  military 
despotism.  Their  sole  occupation  was  war  conducted 
with  an  extreme  of  rigour,  and  it  was  not  an  easy  task 
for  the  British  to  suppress  this  tendency.  But  since 
the  conquest  of  Matabeleland,  in  1893,  ^^^X  ^ve  ceased 


212  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

to  be  predatory  warriors  and  are  now  herdsmen  and 
agriculturalists. 

A  few  particulars  of  Rhodesia's  railway  equipment 
will  be  found  interesting.  The  main  line  is  the  continua- 
tion of  the  Cape  to  Cairo  Railway  from  Cape  Town 
through  Kimberley  and  Mafeking.  From  the  latter 
place  the  general  direction  is  northeasterly  to  Bulawayo; 
thence  northwesterly  to  the  Zambesi  River,  which  is 
crossed  below  Victoria  Falls.  The  rather  difi&cult  task 
of  throwing  a  bridge  across  the  stream  was  completed 
in  1905.  Then  the  railway  continues,  in  a  northeasterly 
direction,  ninety-two  miles  to  Kalomo.  Barotseland 
is  then  entered,  and  the  line  goes  forward  through 
Rhodesia  to  the  Katanga  district  of  Belgian  Kongo.  The 
section  from  Kalomo  to  Broken  Hill,  two  hundred  and 
sixty-one  miles,  was  completed  in  1907,  and  the  Belgian 
Kongo  frontier  was  reached  in  1909.  This  main  line 
makes  the  southern  division  of  the  joint  railway  and 
steamboat  service  (the  latter  for  a  short  distance  on  the 
Nile,  temporarily,  no  doubt),  by  which  passengers  will 
very  soon  be  able  to  go  from  Alexandria  to  Cape  Town, 
the  entire  length  of  the  continent.  As  is  suggested  in 
a  later  chapter,  the  extension  of  the  line  northward  from 
the  Belgian  Kongo  is  contemplated  along  the  east  shore 
of  Lake  Tanganyika.  Physical  conditions  would  seem 
almost  to  necessitate  this,  although  other  considerations 
may  lead  to  a  change.  From  Bulawayo  a  line  goes  north- 
east to  Gwelo,  Salisbury,  and  on  to  Beira  (Portuguese) ; 
from  the  same  junction  point  a  line  one  hundred  and 
twenty  miles  southeast  to  West  Nicholson  mine.  A 
line  runs  from  Gwelo  forty  miles  to  Yankee  Doodle  and 


SOUTH    AFRICA  213 

a  two-foot-gauge  line  goes  fifty  miles  to  Lomagundi. 
Altogether  there  are  about  four  thousand  miles  in  or 
inmiediately  subsidiary  to  the  province. 

It  is  interesting  to  read  of  the  Duke  of  Connaught's 
almost  "Royal  Progress"  through  the  South  Africa 
Union  and  Rhodesia  in  19 10,  and  of  his  declaration  that 
he  returned  to  England  "a  confirmed  Rhodesian,"  as 
he  expressed  himself.  We  may  have  to  make  some 
allowances  for  the  careful  sweeping  and  garnishing 
preparatory  to  this  visit  of  the  King's  delegate;  but 
figures  do  not  always  lie  and  Britons  have  an  incisive 
way  of  looking  into  estimates  of  income  and  expenditure, 
side  by  side  in  their  Budgets,  which  we  should  do  well 
to  imitate.  Therefore  when  His  Royal  Highness  stated 
that  the  estimated  expenditures  for  the  Union  of  South 
Africa  for  the  fiscal  year  ending  March  30,  191 2,  "are 
£16,165,958,  a  decrease  of  £650,281  proportionately  as 
compared  with  the  year  1910-1911,"  we  may  accept  the 
figures,  and  they  speak  loudly  for  the  economics  of  the 
Union.  So  far  as  Rhodesia  itself  is  concerned,  it  is  the 
southern  part  of  the  province  which,  naturally,  shows  the 
greatest  advance;  but  the  population,  as  a  whole,  has  in- 
creased more  than  two  hundred  thousand  in  eight  years. 
Educational  standards  have  been  raised  and  provision 
made  not  only  to  care  for  children  of  European  parents,  but 
natives  as  well.  In  the  statement  of  accounts  submitted 
by  the  Board  of  the  South  African  Company,  responsible 
for  the  administration  of  Rhodesia,  were  two  items,  — 
Rhodesia  Defence  Expenditure,  £2,587,410,  and  General 
Expenditure,  £4,748,525,  which  represent  a  part  of  what 
may  be  called  the  purchase  money  expended  in  obtaining 


214  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Rhodesia  and  keeping  it.  Commenting  upon  this,  the 
Duke  is  reported  to  have  said:  "They,  as  well  as  other 
smaller  items,  are  entered  in  the  balance  sheet  in  order 
to  explain  what  has  become  of  sums  appearing  on  the 
other  side  of  the  account.  They  no  doubt  include  a 
certain  proportion  of  money  unwisely  expended,  but 
omelettes  are  not  made  without  breaking  eggs  and  addi- 
tions are  not  made  to  an  Empire  without  cost.  If  we 
consider  what  the  territory  now  known  as  Rhodesia  was 
when  Cecil  Rhodes  and  his  associates  obtained  possession 
of  it  and  compare  its  condition  then  and  now,  few  people 
will  be  found  to  deny  that  very  great  progress  has  been 
made,  in  spite  of  difficulties  and  disasters  of  a  formidable 
character." 

In  January,  1911,  the  earnings  of  the  South  African 
railways  showed,  for  the  seven  months  that  the  Union 
had  been  an  accomplished  fact,  a  sum  exceeding  by 
£1,000,000  the  figures  for  the  corresponding  period  of  the 
previous  year.  In  February  a  notice  was  given  in  the 
Union  (ParUament)  Assembly  of  a  motion  for  the  segre- 
gation of  natives  within  reserves  that  would  be  admin- 
istered through  native  councils.  There  is  before  the 
authorities  a  very  grave  problem  in  deahng  with  native 
labourers,  and  it  is  something  which  must  be  handled 
with  the  greatest  caution  and  consideration.  The  influx 
of  settlers,  mainly  from  England,  undoubtedly  tends  to 
make  the  future  of  all  parts  of  the  Union  seem  very 
bright;  but  the  coming  of  these  strangers  has  an  influ- 
ence upon  the  natives  that  is  not  always  for  good.  Those 
who  are  willing  to  work  evince  a  perfectly  natural  objec- 
tion to  the  giving  precedence  to  the  newly  arrived  whites. 


so  UTH    AFRICA  21$ 

But  that  is  not  the  gravest  aspect  of  the  case.  The 
European  immigrant  is  encouraged  to  bring  with  him 
his  wife  and  children,  and  when  he  takes  up  his  home- 
stead the  family  is  installed  as  quickly  as  a  dwelling  can 
be  built  for  them.  The  necessary  isolation  of  these 
farms  too  frequently  leaves  the  wife  unprotected,  and 
there  have  been  a  number  of  disquieting  assaults  made 
upon  these  lonely  white  women.  Stringent  repressive 
measures  have  been  advocated  and  severe  punishments 
suggested,  in  addition  to  the  objectionable  segregation 
already  alluded  to;  but  the  local  statesmen  and  publicists 
are  reluctant  to  have  recourse  to  harsh  means,  and  even 
many  of  the  Britons  decline  to  favour  such  action.  The 
mihtarist,  and  there  are  such  in  appreciable  numbers 
in  South  Africa,  would  rely  upon  a  standing  army  and 
its  auxiliaries;  and  he  points  to  the  fact  that  but  for 
the  Boers'  lack  of  trained  officers  and  military  discipline 
the  history  of  the  country  would  be  written  very  dif- 
ferently, and  hence  he  calls  for  a  division  of  the  country 
into  districts,  with  trustworthy  officers  —  British,  of 
course  —  to  train  the  youths,  but  the  permanent  officers 
may,  perhaps,  be  South  African  bom,  and  to  this  he  adds 
the  statement  that  the  mixture  of  races  supports  his  con- 
tention. However,  acute  militarism  has  not  yet  asserted 
itself  in  South  Africa  and  it  is  not  hkely  to  do  so,  while 
the  suggestion  that  the  visit  of  the  Japanese  cruiser 
Ikoma  showed  that  other  powers  were  coming  into  the 
world  who  might  dream  of  invading  South  Africa  has 
been  openly  and  properly  laughed  to  scorn. 

But  the  language  question,  although  not  a  serious 
menace,  is  one  that  is  sure  to  give  trouble.    It  was  wise 


2l6  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

forethought  which  led  the  framers  of  the  Constitution 
to  provide  that  English  and  Dutch  should  be  equal; 
but  it  is  hardly  practicable  at  all  times.  Enghsh  is  the 
most  useful  —  as  to  that  there  can  be  no  question  —  and 
the  Boers  themselves  recognise  this;  yet  they  can  hardly 
be  blamed  for  wishing  (we  speak  of  parents  who  have  had 
no  opportunity  to  acquire  a  command  of  English  and 
who  feel  themselves  to  be  too  old  to  learn)  to  talk  freely 
with  their  children ;  nor  should  we  be  surprised  to  know 
that  pure  Dutch  is  rather  a  scarce  article.  The  Taal 
is  a  patois  much  used  by  the  Hollanders,  and  this  cannot 
be  recognised  by  School  Boards;  so  it  comes  about  that 
some  of  the  older  Hollanders  are  not  satisfied  to  have 
good  Dutch  taught,  the  British  settlers  almost  to  a 
man  object  to  it  vehemently,  and  the  language  question 
is  one  of  the  awkward  nuts  for  the  administration  to 
crack.  The  leaders  of  both  races  appeal  for  co-operation 
and  imdoubtedly  the  possible  —  yes,  easy  —  middle 
course  will  be  determined  and  followed.  The  Union 
of  South  Africa  has  already  acquired  momentum  that  is 
irresistible  and  its  future  is  bright.  Its  policy  is  Hberal 
and  all  strangers  are  made  welcome;  most  cordially 
the  sound,  strong,  energetic  young  man. 

It  has  been  declared  that  South  America  is  the  ideal 
place  for  the  young  citizen  of  the  United  States  to  go 
to  if  he.  feels  that  he  must  seek  his  fortune  away 
from  home;  but  it  seems  to  us  that,  all  things  con- 
sidered, it  is  South  Africa  that  is  to  be  recommended 
for  such  ambition.  Soil,  climate,  social  conditions, 
established  and  permanent  government,  schools,  all 
things  are  there  in  a  more  attractive  form  than  any  of 


SOUTH    AFRICA  217 

the  South  American  States  offer.  If  proof  of  liberality 
towards  strangers  is  asked,  it  is  found  in  the  Govern- 
ment's attitude  with  respect  to  Asiatics.  The  following 
concessions  have  been  made  to  East  Indians:  first, 
Asiatics  now  in  South  Africa  who  had  not  applied  to  be 
registered  in  consequence  of  the  passive  resistance 
movement  were  permitted  to  make  application  within 
six  months;  second,  thirty  Asiatics  then  in  India,  who 
were  deported  under  the  Acts  of  1907-08,  or  who  left 
in  consequence  of  the  passive  resistance  movement 
and  who  would  otherwise  be  entitled  to  register,  might 
return  and  apply  within  six  months;  third,  six  edu- 
cated Indians  will  be  admitted  annually  free  from 
registration.  For  the  year  191 1  ten  Indians  then  in  the 
Transvaal  were  permitted  to  remain  under  temporary 
permits  as  special  cases,  pending  final  legislation ;  fourth, 
well-educated  and  well-known  Asiatics  are  to  be  ex- 
empted from  identification  by  thumb-prints  when 
making  application. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  BLACKS  IN  AFRICA 

WE  do  not  have  to  follow  the  Negro  race  from 
Senegal,  in  the  extreme  west  of  Africa,  to  its 
furthermost  eastern  bomids  in  the  Fiji  Islands  of  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  through  Northern  Africa,  Southern  Asia, 
and  the  Malaysian  Islands.  Nor  do  we  purpose  making 
this  chapter  an  anthropological  study  of  the  Negro  race. 
The  Negro  tribes  of  whom  we  mean  to  speak  may  be 
said  to  be  scattered  over  Africa  from  a  line  roughly 
drawn  south  of  the  great  deserts,  Sahara  and  Libya, 
down  to  a  line  which  may  be  traced  "from  the  Gulf  of 
Biafra  with  a  southeasterly  trend  across  the  equator 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Tana";  or,  defined  by  terms  of  lati- 
tude, from  about  14°  north  to  3°  south.  Within  these 
limits  are  found  most  of  the  true  negroes.  There  may 
be  excursions  outside  of  the  boundaries,  for  we  are  pretty 
sure  to  mention  the  Bantu-Negroids  who  are  south  of 
this  band;  while  the  relations  between  the  yellowish- 
brown  Bushmen  and  Hottentots  and  the  Negro,  admit- 
tedly uncertain,  must  be  considered,  as  well  as  the 
mixtures  of  negro  blood  with  Berbers,  people  of  Hamitic 
stock,  and  Arabs  found  to  the  north,  almost  exclusively, 
of  the  true  negro  zone. 

It  is  the  consensus  of  opinion  among  anthropologists 
that  the  mental  development  of  the  Negro  is  of  a  lower 

218 


THE    BLACKS    IN    AFRICA  219 

standard  than  that  of  the  Caucasian,  most  markedly 
in  adults.  The  negro  child  is  quick  to  learn,  the  grown 
negro  is  very  slow  at  it;  yet  even  in  the  fully  grown 
negro  there  are  certain  traits,  which  we  usually  attribute 
with  special  acuteness  to  animals,  that  are  surprising. 
Their  senses  of  sight  and  hearing  are  certainly  keener 
than  are  those  of  the  whites;  their  instincts  for  direction 
and  locality  are  not  infrequently  as  precise  as  those  of  a 
homing  pigeon  or  the  most  intelligent  wild  animal.  In 
these  attributes  the  negro  is  remarkably  like  the  North 
American  Indian. 

There  are  several  names  used  to  designate  the  people 
whose  physical  characteristics  —  without  too  much 
eflfort  at  scientific  precision  —  are  dark  skin,  closely 
curling,  coarse  hair  (this  last  word  is  employed  quite 
loosely),  broad  noses  with  low  arch,  thick  and  protrud- 
ing lips,  and  large,  clumsy  feet.  "Negritos,"  Uterally 
little  negroes,  is  one  of  these  names,  and  it  was  given  by 
the  Spaniards  to  those  people  who  were,  they  assumed, 
the  aborigines  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  although  this 
is  probably  rather  doubtful  ethnology.  The  term  is 
now  employed  to  designate  one  of  the  great  groups  of 
the  East  Indies  and  elsewhere,  and  by  some  writers  is 
applied  to  certain  of  the  African  tribes  who  are,  those 
writers  think,  akin.  M.  de  Quatrefages,  the  eminent 
French  ethnologist,  made  a  suggestion  that  seems 
reasonable.  It  is  that  an  original  stem,  undetermined  as 
to  origin  but  assumed  to  have  been  in  southwestern 
Asia,  sent  out  two  branches,  one  of  which  went  eastward 
into  Indo-Oceanica,  the  other  westward  and  eventually 
reached  equatorial  Africa.     Generally  accepted  by  eth- 


220  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

nologists  and  sociologists,  this  theory  would  seem  to 
place  the  negrito  race  closest  to  the  primitive  form 
of  human  beings,  and  we  must  admit  that  the  mental 
and  physical  characteristics  of  the  negro  seem  to  justify 
this  conclusion;  assuming,  as  we  may  properly  do, 
that  negro  and  negrito  simply  differentiate  the  two 
sections  of  one  and  the  same  division  of  mankind.  But 
still  there  is  no  satisfactory  theory  advanced  as  to  the 
link  connecting  that  primitive  form  with  the  higher  ones, 
and  the  discussion  takes  us  too  far  into  the  field  of 
speculative  anthropology. 

Restricting  ourselves  to  the  word  Negro  and  limiting 
our  horizon  to  Africa,  we  still  find  considerable,  indeed 
tremendous,  differences  between  the  various  groups 
which,  in  that  continent,  make  up  the  great  negro  race. 
A  glance  at  the  plate  given  in  the  last  edition  of  the 
New  International  Encyclopaedia  will  at  once  satisfy 
the  investigator  that  the  negro  of  the  east  coast  of 
Africa  is  the  superior  to  his  kinsman  of  the  west  coast, 
and  that  both  are  higher  in  the  scale  of  human  develop- 
ment and  mental  attainment  than  are  the  negroes  of  the 
interior  of  the  continent.  The  colour  of  these  people 
ranges  from  a  light  chocolate  through  deepening  shades 
of  brown  to  nearly  black.  We  must  note,  however, 
that  the  negro  colour  does  not  depend  upon  the  influence 
of  geographical  position,  exposure  to  the  sun,  relative 
degree  of  heat,  or  purity  of  blood.  In  Central  Africa 
there  are  to  be  found,  side  by  side,  the  greatest  diver- 
sity in  colour;  and  even  in  the  one  family,  when 
there  is  no  reason  to  charge  infidelity  to  the  mother, 
there  are  sometimes  inexphcable  variants.    The  negro 


THE    BLACKS    IN    AFRICA  221 

hair  (?)  has  been  shown  by  several  ethnologists  and 
microscopists,  conclusively  by  P.  A.  Brown,*  to  be  flat 
in  cross  section,  not  round;  without  central  duct;  to 
leave  the  skin  at  a  right  angle  to  the  surface ;  it  is  spirally 
twisted  or  curled ;  it  gets  its  colouring  in  a  different  way 
from  that  of  true  hair,  and  it  will  mat  together;  that  is, 
it  will  felt  as  wool  does,  which  true  hair  cannot  be  made 
to  do  —  in  fact  that  this  growth  upon  the  negro  is  alto- 
gether unlike  true  hair  and  is  like  true  wool.  These 
capillary  characteristics  are  found  equally  in  all  divisions 
of  the  race,  Negroes,  Negritos,  and  Negroids;  but  in 
the  last  they  change  with  the  degree  of  infusion  of  other 
blood.  Other  characteristics  to  which  attention  must 
be  given  are  the  length  of  the  fore-arm  and  of  the  leg, 
the  small  calf  of  the  leg  and  projecting  heel,  and  the 
tendency  to  projecting  jaws  (prognathism). 

If  we  accept  the  statement  which  has  been  made  by 
many  competent,  thoroughly  honest,  and  sympathetic 
observers,  that  the  negro  is  mentally  inferior  to  the 
white  man  mainly  because  the  premature  closing  of  the 
cranial  sutures  and  lateral  pressure  of  the  frontal  bone 
arrest  the  growth  of  the  brain-pan  in  later  adolescence 
or  early  maturity,  yet  it  is  not  fair  to  assume  too  much 
from  the  seeming  inferiority.  When  a  reasonable 
opportunity  is  given  under  competent  direction  in  the 
matter  of  education,  we  cannot  truthfully  say  that  the 
negro  is  unable  to  study  and  to  assimilate  knowledge 
in  a  degree  measurably  comparable  with  the  attainments 
of  the  white  pupil  or  student.  But  while  cheerfully 
making  mental  note  of  the  brilliant  exceptions  we  must 
•"The  Classification  of  Mankind." 


222  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

say  that  this  receptivity  shows  a  tendency  to  check  as 
the  young  grow  into  manhood,  and  one  has  but  to  read 
the  reports  of  any  Christian  missionary  society  working 
in  Africa  to  be  convinced  that  the  relapse  is  the  rule. 
Of  this,  even  in  our  own  country,  there  is  such  constant 
danger  as  to  make  it  a  rule;  while  in  Africa  there  are 
few  exceptions. 

Although  the  negro  (we  are  now  thinking  of  him  as 
raised  above  the  savage  whose  delights  were  war, 
slaughter,  capture,  and  destruction)  is  first  of  all  an 
agriculturalist,  then  a  hunter  and  a  herdsman,  yet  he 
is  capable  of  very  satisfactory  development  as  a  crafts- 
man, and  with  proper  training  he  will  develop  skill  in 
working  with  metals  and  as  a  carpenter;  the  metal 
working  which  explorers  found  was  never  to  be  con- 
sidered seriously  as  the  effort  of  artisans.  "The 
bronze  castings  by  the  cire  perdue  process,*  and  the 
cups  and  horns  of  ivory  elaborately  carved,  which  were 
produced  by  the  natives  of  Guinea  after  their  intercourse 
with  the  Portuguese  of  the  sixteenth  century,  bear  ample 
witness  to  this.  But  the  rapid  decline  and  practical 
evanescence  of  both  industries,  when  that  intercourse 
was  interrupted,  shows  that  the  native  craftsman  was 
raised  for  the  moment  above  his  normal  level  by  direct 
foreign  inspiration  and  was  unable  to  sustain  the  high 
quality  of  his  work  when  the  inspiration  failed."  f  The 
various  allusions  in  the  preceding  chapters  of  this  book 

*  A  method  of  casting  bronze  by  making  a  model  in  wax  and  inclos- 
ing it  in  plaster,  melting  the  wax  out  of  the  plaster,  and  then  using  the 
latter  as  a  mould  for  the  bronze.  —  Cent.  Did. 

t  Thomas  Athol  Joyce,  Assistant  in  the  Department  of  Ethnography, 
British  Museum. 


THE    BLACKS    IN    AFRICA  223 

to  the  skill  displayed  by  negroes,  negroids  rather,  for 
the  cases  cited  have  generally  been  found  among  peoples 
of  mixed  blood,  in  no  way  stultify  this  quotation,  because 
the  work  of  making  arms,  offensive  and  defensive,  in 
handling  iron,  etc.,  has  all  been  of  an  inferior  character. 
We  must  be  extremely  careful  if  we  venture  to  discuss 
degrees  or  forms  of  culture  among  the  Central  African 
negroes,  because  environment  has  always  been  such  an 
important  determining  factor;  and  the  admitted  ten- 
dency of  the  natives  to  wander,  whether  as  a  truly 
pastoral  people,  primarily  for  the  benefit  of  their  herds 
or  flocks;  as  nomadic  hunters,  following  the  game  which 
their  ovm  attacks  might  drive  from  place  to  place;  or 
simply  as  waifs  and  strays,  for  change  or  because  of  some 
misfortune-bringing  "voodos" — anyoneof  these  or  many 
other  causes  would  tend  to  produce  appalling  confusion 
in  habits  and  customs,  and  these  would  in  turn  lead 
all  but  the  most  careful  and  precise  observer  to  conclu- 
sions which  ethnological  facts  will  not  support.  Social 
conditions  have  always  been  and  are  now  primitive 
among  the  negroes  in  Africa,  and  even  in  our  own  land 
it  cannot  be  denied  that  when  left  to  their  own  devices 
the  negroes  are  lamentably  prone  to  evince  a  tendency 
towards  looseness  in  such  matters.  In  African  negro 
society  the  basis  has  been  found  to  be  the  village  com- 
munity rather  than  the  family,  and  even  when  there 
has  been  such  a  thing  as  a  negro  kingdom,  such  as, 
for  example,  Dahomey,  the  tendency  towards  imperial 
or  royal  brutality  has  been  painfully  marked.  Among 
the  Bantu-Negroids — the  name  itself  suggests  the  like- 
lihood of  there  having  been  an  infusion  of  other  than 


224  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

the  pure  negro  blood  —  the  history  of  the  states  of 
Lundaand  Cazembe,aswe  know  of  it,  does  not  completely 
demolish  the  theory  which  has  just  been  advanced. 
Lunda  was  an  empire  of  no  mean  proportions,  if  its 
culture  was  not  high;  the  people  were  Bantus,  and  at 
one  time  their  domains  stretched  from  the  Kuango  River 
to  the  Lualaba.  The  territory  is  now  divided  between 
Angola  (Portuguese)  and  the  Belgian  Kongo.  Cazembe 
took  its  name  from  its  ruler.  It  is  now  a  part  of  the 
Union  of  South  Africa.  It  is  north  of  Lake  Bangweolo 
and  is  rather  outside  of  the  equatorial  zone  wherein  are 
the  true  negroes  we  are  discussing. 

Polygyny  is  the  normal  instinct  with  the  negro, 
although  in  this  he  is  not  at  all  peculiar,  and  in  Africa 
this  state  of  affairs  is  almost  essential  to  the  maintenance 
of  the  population.  Women  are  so  much  in  excess  of 
men  numerically,  owing  to  accidents  of  the  chase,  private 
brawls,  and  communal  wars,  that  if  the  effort  of  sincere 
missionaries  to  induce  the  natives  to  give  up  their  plu- 
rality of  wives  were  successful,  the  result  would  be  a 
decrease  of  population  that  would  rapidly  verge  upon 
extinction.  Monogyny,  by  the  way,  is  rarely  demanded 
by  the  women  themselves,  mainly  on  the  principle  that 
many  hands  make  Ught  work.  Yet  women  are  reckoned 
of  some  accoimt,  it  would  seem,  for  among  the  negroes 
descent  in  the  female  line  is  more  common  than  is  the 
patriarchal  system.  The  African  secret  societies  are  a 
most  potent  influence  for  good  or  evil,  as  the  case  may 
be ;  of tener  the  latter,  probably.  And  so  powerful  is  this 
system  that  it  is  usually  quite  impossible  for  a  man  to 
keep  out  of  a  society  —  the  pressure  brought  to  bear  is 


THE    BLACKS    IN    AFRICA  22$ 

quite  as  strong  and  as  irresistible  as  is  that  of  a  labour 
union  with  us;  and  always  allegiance  to  his  society  is 
more  dominating  upon  a  man's  acts  than  are  family  ties. 

Cannibalism  was  popular  with  the  true  negro  simply  as 
a  matter  of  taste.  He  ate  human  flesh  whenever  he 
could  get  it  because  he  Uked  it,  not  for  any  reUgious  or 
sentimental  reason.  Good  luck  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  performance  and  rarely  was  it  a  case  of  necessity, 
because  usually  it  would  have  been  much  easier  to  kill 
wild  game  or  butcher  a  domestic  animal  than  to  catch 
an  enemy,  with  the  possibihty  always  of  having  the 
tables  turned  and  himself  put  into  the  pot  to  satisfy 
the  appetite  of  his  enemy!  Indeed,  it  has  been  estab- 
hshed  as  a  fact  that  the  negroes  who  were,  and  it  may 
be  proper  to  say  are,  most  addicted  to  this  horrible 
practice  of  cannibalism  are  the  very  ones  who  inhabit 
districts  where  game  is  most  plentiful. 

Among  the  true  African  negroes  there  is  no  evidence 
of  a  Stone  Age,  either  neolithic  or  palaeolithic.  So  far 
as  has  been  observed,  when  stones  were  used  at  all  they 
were  simply  handy  pebbles  or  small  waterwom  boulders 
employed  as  rough  hammers  for  the  moment,  perhaps 
to  crush  ore  or  to  shape  metal,  without  being  preserved 
as  permanent  implements.  The  people  display  traces 
of  some  aptitude  as  metal  workers,  but  up  to  a  very  low 
stage  only,  and  implements  and  weapons  —  of  war  or 
chase  —  even  when- made  of  stone,  evince  no  sign  of 
shaping.  In  other  industries,  such  as  pottery  making 
and  weaving,  the  native  attainments  were  nothing  to 
attract  attention.  With  the  true  negroes  it  is  doubtful 
if  much  time  was  given  to  weaving;  when  they  conceived 


226  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

the  idea  that  garments  of  some  kind  were  essential  or 
desirable,  it  is  pretty  certain  that  these  people  took  the 
handiest  leaves  for  the  purpose.  The  sentiment  which 
led  the  savage  to  use  raiment  is  not  only  outside  of  our 
province,  but  its  consideration  involves  esoteric  knowl- 
edge which  had  better  not  be  displayed  here.  Among 
the  Bantus  palm  cloth  was  woven  with  some  skill,  but 
these  people,  as  has  been  said,  do  not  properly  belong 
in  the  class  we  are  discussing.  We  cannot,  of  course, 
recognise  cotton  weaving  as  an  African  native  industry. 
Pottery  certainly  was  known  to  all  negroes,  but  only  in 
its  lowest  stages  of  development.  They  did  not  make 
use  of  the  potter's  wheel,  of  glazing  and  firing  they  had 
but  the  most  rudimentary  knowledge,  if  any  at  all, 
and  naturally  the  product  had  less  endurance  than  is 
ordinarily  expected. 

The  religion  of  the  negroes  is  a  very  complex  subject 
which  hardly  seems  apposite  here,  since  it  demands  too 
much  space  and  because  it  has  received  such  careful 
attention  from  specialists  who  have  discussed  it  from 
every  conceivable  viewpoint.  Spencer's  "The  Principles 
of  Sociology"  gives  about  the  most  convenient  synopsis. 
Broadly  speaking,  the  negro  is  naturally  a  spiritist  and 
almost  invariably  strongly  controlled  by  his  fetish.  He 
may,  it  is  true,  make  his  own  fetish  out  of  any  material 
at  hand  or  raise  some  small  object  to  that  dignity;  but 
once  made  and  installed,  whether  a  shell,  a  bone,  a  scrap 
of  cloth,  a  bit  of  wood  shaped  by  nature  or  by  hand,  it 
is  reckoned  all-powerful,  offensively  and  defensively, 
until  something  happens  to  discredit  its  influence; 
then  it  is  calmly  rejected  or  violently  deposed  with  vile 


THE    BLACKS    IN    AFRICA  227 

contumely  and  another  is  picked  up  or  made!  The 
placating  of  evil  spirits,  who  are  in  the  majority  as  a  rule, 
not  only  in  Africa  but  all  the  world  over,  and  the 
gratifying  and  flattering  of  good  spirits  is  the  whole  of 
the  negro's  ritual.  The  witch  doctor,  magician,  medi- 
cine-man is  all-powerful,  unless  he  makes  an  egregious 
mistake,  when  he  is  deposed  incontinently,  if  he  is  not 
murdered  outright  and  eaten. 

Before  considering  the  present  status  of  the  African 
Blacks  or  venturing,  most  hesitatingly,  to  speak  of  their 
future,  let  us  stop  for  a  moment  to  think  of  a  fact  which 
may  be  thought  interesting.  Even  if  the  negro  is  lower 
in  the  scale  of  mental  endowTnent,  and  in  the  capacity 
which  that  statement  suggests,  than  is  the  white  man, 
the  Creator  (Nature,  if  the  word  is  preferred)  seems  to 
have  adapted  him  to  his  environment  in  precisely  the 
same  admirable  way  that  He  has  displayed  when  putting 
His  hand  to  so  many  others  of  His  works  —  shall  we  not 
say  all  of  His  works  ?  The  skin  of  the  negro  is  so  con- 
structed that  the  pores  are,  from  our  point  of  view, 
abnormally  large,  permitting  of  a  flow  of  perspiration 
which  seems  to  us  to  be  excessive,  but  which  really 
enables  the  negro  to  thrive  in  just  such  an  intensely  hot 
climate  as  is  found  in  equatorial  Africa;  and  there  are 
other  selected  characteristics  of  the  skin  which  work 
together  with  that  just  mentioned.  This  is  but  one  of 
the  apparent  adaptations  to  environment  which  Nature 
has  provided  in  the  case  of  the  negro  to  fit  him  to  live 
and  actually  to  be  comfortable  in  that  trying  region. 
Immunity  from  disorders  which  have  proved  so  fatal  to 
the  intruding  white  man  is  another.     Whether  this  came 


228  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

after  long  acclimatisation  or  as  a  natural  endowment  we 
can  hardly  know.  The  same  thing  will,  of  course,  be 
said  of  every  other  trait  that  differentiates  the  negro 
from  the  white  man  and  contributes  towards  his  fitness 
for  his  native  home.  But  whether  all  of  these  are 
called  adaptations  through  natural  selection  or  special 
providences,  the  result  was  that  the  Arabs,  or  whoever 
were  the  first  pioneers  of  a  different  culture  and  earliest 
intruders  upon  the  black  man's  equatorial  preserves, 
found  him  estabhshed  there,  if  not  in  entire  peace,  at 
least  with  a  measure  of  comfort  which  gave  him  pro- 
prietary rights ;  and  it  has  seemed  to  many  students  of 
sociology  that  there  in  Africa  was  the  place  intended  by 
a  beneficent  Creator  to  be  the  permanent  abiding-place 
of  the  Negro ;  that  there  he  might  be  dominant. 

Yet  the  march  of  civilisation,  if  it  has  not  actually 
displaced  the  blacks  by  whites,  has  so  transformed  the 
conditions  under  which  they  formerly  lived  that  there  is 
little  left  of  the  old  hfe;  and  it  is  a  lamentable  fact  that 
the  present  status  of  the  natives  is,  all  things  considered, 
worse  than  was  the  former.  It  is  an  unfortunate  con- 
comitant of  European  civilisation  that  its  first  impress 
has,  almost  without  an  exception,  been  disastrous  to 
people  of  a  lower  degree  of  culture  than  the  European 
standards  (e.g.,  Africa,  America,  Australia)  or  essen- 
tially different  from  them  in  kind  even  when  there  was 
a  reasonable  comparison  in  degree  (e.g.,  India,  China, 
Japan).  If  we  look  at  any  part  of  the  world  to  which 
the  adventurous  European  explorers  and  navigators  went 
in  the  fifteenth,  sixteenth,  and  seventeenth  centuries  we 
must  admit,  if  we  are  honest,  that  the  first  touch  of 


THE    BLACKS    IN    AFRICA  229 

that  civilisation  was  blighting.  For  every  sincere  bearer 
of  the  banner  of  the  Prince  of  Peace  there  were  a  hundred 
reckless  buccaneers,  without  one  thought  for  the  physical 
or  spiritual  welfare  of  the  "savage  heathen"  whom  they 
met;  whose  sole  object  was  to  get  wealth,  the  means 
being  unimportant;  whose  fierce  lust  held  no  woman  in 
respect,  and  whose  determination  to  seize  slaves  was 
stopped  by  nothing.  It  was  so  in  the  case  of  Africa. 
Down  both  coasts  the  European  civilisation  marched, 
one  missionary  disposed  to  recognise  the  brotherhood  of 
man  and  a  hundred  freebooters  insistent  that  to  the  vic- 
tors belonged  the  spoils,  and  they  took  them  in  any  way 
they  could  and  in  every  shape  they  found  them,  —  gold, 
ivory,  slaves,  whatever  there  was  that  could  be  converted 
into  money.  Not  always  was  the  so-called  missionary 
the  epitome  of  Christian  kindness;  the  cross  and  the 
sword  were  too  often  borne  by  the  same  person;  and  it  is 
not  surprising  that  erelong  the  sight  of  a  foreign  ship  was 
enough  to  throw  the  helpless  natives  into  a  panic,  no 
matter  how  bravely  waved  the  banner  of  the  Church. 
The  compensation  for  articles  purchased,  when  it  was 
made  at  all,  may  have  satisfied  the  childishly  ignorant 
native,  pleased  with  a  toy.  It  was,  no  doubt,  high 
finance  in  those  days  to  get  an  elephant's  tusk  worth 
two  hundred  pounds  sterling  for  a  string  of  beads  that 
cost  sixpence,  but  it  never  was  honest;  and  when  the 
paucity  of  that  for  which  articles  of  real  value  had  been 
exchanged  came  to  be  known  to  the  Africans,  the  effect 
was  bad.  This  sort  of  barter  was  contemptible,  but  there 
were  worse  influences  exerted  by  the  civiUsed  Europeans. 
We  have  no  reason  to  believe  that  these  blacks  of  Equa- 


230  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

torial  Africa  were  all  and  always  strictly  abstemious  in 
the  matter  of  intoxicants.  Just  how  they  first  learnt  to 
get  alcohol  in  a  potable  form  is  not  of  moment  here; 
but  there  are  few  places  on  this  earth  where  the  palm 
tree  grows  that  the  people  were  not  making  palm 
wine  long  before  the  day  of  their  discovery  by  Euro- 
peans. As  it  was  made  by  them  it  was  one  of  the 
least  injurious  forms  that  alcoholic  beverages  assume. 
Had  the  drinking  habit  been  permitted  to  stop  there, 
all  would  have  been  reasonably  well;  but  the  newcomers 
taught  the  natives,  only  too  willing  to  learn,  that  there 
were  other  alcoholic  stimulants  more  potent  than  their 
own  almost  innocuous  palm  wine.  Nearly  every  book 
about  Africa  we  pick  up,  whether  written  by  mission- 
ary or  layman,  contains  stories  of  natives'  demand  for 
"whiskey."  This  was  the  first  lesson,  and  from  its  influ- 
ence Africa  has  not  yet  recovered. 

Again,  it  seems  to  the  native  that  it  is  very  easy  to 
earn,  by  doing  some  Httle  odd  task  for  the  European, 
the  pittance  which  suffices  to  keep  him  ahve  for  a  few 
days.  That  much  secured,  there  is  no  occasion  to  worry 
about  the  future,  and  he  "knocks  off"  all  work  until  his 
purse  is  once  more  empty  and  his  stomach  calling  for 
food.  The  same  statement  which  has  been  made  about 
the  Fulas*  may  be  repeated  here  as  applicable  to  both 
sides  of  the  continent  as  well  as  all  across  the  broad  zone 
in  which  the  true  negroes  are  found:  the  people  are 
examples  of  bad  results  arrived  at  when  a  strange  civili- 
sation has  become  dominant  and  yet  is  not  properly 
assimilated  by  the  natives.  The  present  state  of  the 
*  See  Chapter  XI,  Upper  Senegal  and  Niger. 


THE    BLACKS    IN    AFRICA  231 

African  negro  is,  in  nearly  every  respect,  decidedly  worse 
than  was  the  first.  The  exploiting  of  his  country,  the 
establishing  of  steamboat  lines  on  the  rivers  and  lakes, 
the  building  of  railways  all  over  the  continent,  have  made 
it  easier  for  the  people  to  gratify  their  natural  fondness 
for  moving  about  —  simply  to  be  on  the  go,  for  business 
they  have  none  —  and  they  yield  most  readily;  but  the 
assimilation  of  the  civilisation  that  all  this  develop- 
ment connotes  has  not  yet  attained  the  level  which  those 
who  wish  the  negro  well  would  like  to  see.  Of  other 
conditions,  such  as  the  horrors  of  the  Belgian  Kongo,  and 
other  places  where  they  are  somewhat  similar,  yet  not 
quite  so  bad,  we  will  not  speak  further  here.  It  is  enough 
to  say  that  it  is  the  influence  of  the  acts  of  Europeans 
which  has  brought  about  such  conditions,  and  which 
would  keep  them  aUve  indefinitely  were  it  not  for 
pubHc  sentiment,  of  which  the  African  negro,  who  is 
the  real  sufferer,  knows  nothing  All  this  must  do  more 
to  counteract  the  altruistic  efforts  of  missionary  and 
teacher  than  has  been  accomphshed  for  permanent  good 
in  the  way  of  evangehsation  at  all  the  mission  sta- 
tions throughout  Cen tral  Africa  put  together.  Nominally 
the  slave  trade  has  been  abolished,  but  it  is  true  that 
festering  spots  still  exist  —  a  disgrace  to  our  vaunted 
Christian  civilisation. 

Of  the  future  for  the  blacks  in  Africa  it  is  difl5cult 
to  speak.  Pessimistic  as  it  sounds,  the  present  writer 
looks  upon  it  as  Ukely  to  be  hopeless  in  the  extreme. 
What  has  been  said  by  earnest,  hopeful,  and  sympathetic 
observers,  diplomats  and  consuls,  scientists,  merchants, 
travellers,  missionaries,  concerning  the  natives  of  the 


232  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

West  Coast,  is  equally  applicable  to  those  of  the  interior 
and  of  the  East  Coast.  They  have  no  idea  of  business 
—  for  their  bartering  is  not  business  —  and  no  exchange 
of  arts;  the  little  they  do  of  their  own  initiative  in  agri- 
culture and  stock-raising  is  not  a  sufficient  foundation 
upon  which  to  erect  an  economic  structure  that  is  to 
survive.  Throughout  this  broad  belt  the  natives,  even 
when  they  profess  Christianity,  have  no  resource  of 
occupation  or  employment  upon  which  to  fall  back 
when  they  are  made  to  realise  that  one  of  the  first  prin- 
ciples of  that  religion  demands  the  sweat  of  the  brow 
before  there  shall  be  eating  of  bread.  They  are  natu- 
rally idle,  and  in  idleness  they  readily  fall  into  evil.  The 
contact  with  European  civilisation,  when  that  contact 
comes  outside  the  confines  of  the  mission  station,  too 
often  brings  an  education  which  panders  to  their  idleness 
and  proneness  to  evil.  If  something  salutary  and  per- 
manent is  to  be  done  to  save  the  Blacks  of  Equatorial 
Africa  from  extermination,  there  must  be  co-operation 
between  governments,  merchants,  and  missionaries  to 
establish  industrial  and  technical  schools  in  order  that 
the  weakly  disposition  to  idleness  may  be  overcome  and 
something  like  capital  secured ;  and  this  effort  must  pass 
out  beyond  the  door  of  the  school  until  watchful  care 
shall  round  out  the  good  work  begun  by  the  teacher. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
EVERYBODTS  AFRICA 

ON  a  recent  sketch  map  of  Africa,  dated  1910, 
there  were  just  three  spots  uncoloured,  indicat- 
ing independence,  —  Abyssinia,  Morocco,  and  the  little 
republic,  Liberia;  together  their  area  did  not  reach 
seven  hundred  thousand  square  miles.  Morocco's 
estimated  one  hundred  and  seventy  thousand  was  a 
very  indefinite  quantity,  and  Abyssinia's  four  hundred 
and  sixty-two  thousand  is  another  rough  approxima- 
tion. Liberia's  forty-one  thousand  is  now  fairly  exact. 
It  is,  however,  reasonably  safe  to  say  that  these  three 
States  are  but  about  one-twentieth  of  the  whole  conti- 
nent, and  they  were  all  that  was  not  under  the  control 
of  a  European  Power.  While  writing  this  book,  nego- 
tiations were  concluded  between  France  and  Germany 
whereby  Morocco  virtually  ceases  to  be  an  independent 
State,  and  may  hereafter  be  included  with  France's 
other  holdings,  for  Spain's  protest  is  really  to  be  looked 
upon  as  a  negligible  quantity.  As  a  matter  of  absolute 
fact,  however,  Abyssinia  is  the  only  part  of  Africa  which 
possesses  even  a  semblance  of  original  autonomy.  It  is 
still  nominally,  at  any  rate,  ruled  by  natives;  whereas 
Morocco  is  not  governed  by  aborigines,  and  Liberia  is 
a  creation  of  comparatively  modem  times,  whose  gov- 
ernment has  in  no  way  connection  with  the  original 
inhabitants  of  the  land. 

233 


234  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Now  this  means  that  these  three  countries  —  Abys- 
sinia, Liberia,  and  Morocco — are  all  that  is  left,  in  1910, 
of  the  great  continent  which  had  not  been  taken  under 
the  "protection"  of  some  one  of  the  European  nations. 
Admitting  cheerfully  the  benefit  to  the  whole  world 
which  this  "protection"  may  confer,  yet  not  accepting 
it  as  a  necessary  result  in  every  aspect,  it  is  still  some- 
what depressing  to  think  that  all  efforts  to  civilise  Africa 
have  resulted  in  there  being  but  the  handful  of  its  inhab- 
itants still  living  in  Abyssinia  who  are  considered  able 
to  take  care  of  themselves;  for,  after  all,  the  dominant 
class  in  Morocco  are  aliens,  and  Liberia,  nominally  ruled 
by  officials  who  are  elected,  is  nevertheless  "protected" 
by  the  United  States. 

Considering  this  sketch  map  in  its  most  important 
phase  —  that  is,  taking  careful  account  of  the  markings 
that  indicate  the  particular  European  Power  which  claims 
protectorate  rights  —  we  find  that  Great  Britain,  France, 
Germany,  Portugal,  Belgium,  Italy,  Spain,  and  Turkey 
have  all  felt  called  upon  to  grab  some  part  or  parts  of 
Africa  for  various  alleged  reasons,  most  of  them  specious, 
although  others  appeal  strongly  to  our  sense  of  propriety. 
It  is  probably  true  that  some  of  the  European  countries 
are  overcrowded  in  their  population,  and  that  being  so 
it  seems  but  right  and  natural  that  the  government  of  a 
particular  State  should  prefer  to  get  possession  of  a  piece 
of  land  in  another  continent  and  have  absolute  controlling 
rights  there  than  to  see  its  citizens  go  to  the  United 
States,  or  Canada,  or  some  one  of  the  South  American 
republics  as  colonists,  there  to  become  contributors 
towards  the  support  of  another  government  —  possibly 


everybody's    AFRICA'  235 

a  commercial  or  military  rival  —  and  eventually  expatri- 
ate themselves,  as  does  that  large  percentage  of  European 
emigrants  who  are  really  desirable  citizens  in  the  countries 
wherein  they  make  their  new  homes.  But  the  specious- 
ness  of  some  of  the  alleged  reasons  for  acquiring  a 
part  of  Africa  is  manifest  to  all  disinterested  persons 
who  have  read  what  has  been  said  in  the  preceding 
chapters  of  the  cHmate,  generally,  in  Africa.  Compara- 
tively little  of  the  great  continent's  11,508,793  square 
miles  is  suited  to  colonisation  by  Europeans;  the  Medi- 
terranean littoral  is  not  really  attractive  to  Europeans 
who  desire  to  make  permanent  homes  and  rear  families. 
Back  of  that  narrow  foreshore,  with  only  occasional 
attractive  spots,  is  the  wide,  practically  impossible 
desert,  whose  oases  even  are  not  in  every  way  desirable 
"homes";  then  comes  equatorial  Africa,  with  barely 
possible  colonies  on  the  extreme  eastern  and  western 
coasts,  but  quite  impossible  in  the  interior,  and  we  must 
go  a  long  way  down  towards  South  Africa  before  we 
reach  territory  that  is  properly  adapted  to  European 
colonisation. 

"The  scramble  for  Africa"  is  a  coined  phrase  which 
most  aptly  describes  the  determination  of  sundry  Euro- 
pean Powers  to  get  just  as  large  sHces  of  the  continent 
as  possible.  The  earliest  efforts  of  Holland,  Great 
Britain,  and  France  can  hardly  be  stigmatised  as  an 
indecent  scramble.  Holland's  effort,  as  has  been  shown, 
was  a  perfectly  legitimate  one,  and  in  it  she  received 
some  co-operation  from  France;  although  we  may  very 
properly  take  exception  to  Holland's  methods  apropos 
of  the  natives.    The  joint  effort  of  Great  Britain  and 


236  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

France  in  Egypt  did  not  contemplate  colonisation,  and 
since  the  latter  has  been  ousted,  upon  tacit  understand- 
ing that  she  is  to  have  a  free  hand  in  other  parts  of  the 
continent,  the  former  has  not  strengthened  her  hold  with 
any  idea  of  making  Egypt  a  colony  for  British  emigrants. 
Great  Britain's  supplanting  Holland  in  South  Africa 
was  not  looked  upon  with  favour  by  the  British  people 
for  a  long  time.  In  Parliament  there  was,  at  one  time, 
a  resolution  introduced  and  accepted  by  a  large  majority 
vote  declaring  that  further  effort  in  promoting  South 
African  colonisation  was  to  be  deprecated.  This  atti- 
tude was  so  general  and  so  strong  that  the  ambition  of 
those  who  had  in  mind  to  secure  a  broad  belt,  north 
and  south  through  the  longitudinal  centre  of  the  conti- 
nent, to  connect  the  Egyptian  "sphere  of  influence" 
with  the  actual  possessions  in  the  extreme  south,  was  so 
effectually  blocked  that  when  the  time  came,  as  it  was 
sure  to  come,  for  the  great  importance  of  this  to  be  appar- 
ent to  every  Briton,  the  opportunity  to  acquire  this  most 
desirable  right  of  way  had  been  lost  forever.  Germany 
and  Belgium  had  closed  in  south  of  the  equator  and 
from  the  southern  end  of  Lake  Tanganyika  up  to  the 
Uganda  Protectorate  the  Cape  to  Cairo  Railway  —  the 
exclusive  control  of  which  would  be  so  highly  advan- 
tageous to  Great  Britain  —  must  traverse  lands  over 
which  England  exercises  no  rights. 

If  we  somewhat  arbitrarily  fix  the  date,  we  may  say 
that  the  scramble  for  Africa  began  in  1884.  Not  a  full 
decade  before  that  year  an  over-liberal  estimate  of  the 
areas  in  Africa  controlled  by  European  nations  put  the 
total  at  about  one  million  two  hundred  and  seventy- 


everybody's    AFRICA  237 

one  thousand  square  miles  or  only  one-tenth,  roughly, 
of  the  continent.  These  figures  include  the  claim  of 
Portugal,  known  to  be  impossible,  to  something  hke 
seven  hundred  thousand  square  miles  and  embracing  a 
vague  hinterland  to  her  coast  possessions,  although  the 
area  under  her  effective  control  did  not  actually  exceed 
about  forty  thousand  square  miles.  Great  Britain, 
before  the  real  scramble  began,  had  two  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  square  miles,  France  one  hundred  and 
seventy  thousand,  Spain  one  thousand,  and  the  indepen- 
dent Dutch  republics,  the  Transvaal  and  the  Orange 
Free  State,  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand.  All  of 
these  figures  are  merely  rough  approximations,  for  any- 
thing like  precise  surveys  and  strict  delimitations  have 
not  yet  been  made  in  most  of  the  African  protecto- 
rates. "Egypt  and  the  Egyptian  Sudan,  Tunisia,  and 
Tripoli  were  subject  in  diflfering  ways  to  the  overlord- 
ship  of  the  Sultan  of  Turkey,  and  with  these  may  be 
ranked,  in  the  scale  of  organised  governments,  the  three 
principal  independent  states,  Morocco,  Abyssinia,  and 
Zanzibar,  as  also  the  negro  republic  of  Liberia."  In 
Central  Africa,  below  the  Sahara  and  Libya  deserts, 
almost  a  full  half  of  the  continent,  and  virtually  all  within 
the  tropics,  was  still  held  by  innumerable  tribes,  with 
every  conceivable  form  of  government,  from  an  "empire" 
down  to  a  petty  village  community  of  just  a  few  huts. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  determine  the  moving  causes 
which  led  to  the  cutting  up  of  Africa  and  the  appropria- 
tion of  the  slices  by  European  states.  The  first  of  the 
excuses  for  the  "scramble"  is  not  usually  given  much 
prominence  by  writers  who  hold  a  brief  from  their  respec- 


238  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

tive  governments,  but  there  is  no  such  impediment  to 
declaring  here  that  it  was  simply  a  game  of  "they  should 
take  who  have  the  power  and  they  should  keep  who 
can."  The  weakness  of  the  African  people  was  the 
opportunity  for  Europe's  strength.  To  say  that  this 
native  chief  or  that  negro  king  asked  some  European 
monarch  to  take  him  imder  his  protection  is  simply 
euphemism.  After  Great  Britain  reaUsed  that  Germany 
had  designs  upon  African  territory,  it  was  a  case  of  ''off 
we  go  and  the  devil  take  the  hindermost."  That  is  a 
plain,  ingenuous  statement  made  without  intending  to 
hurt  anybody's  feelings,  and  certainly  without  thought 
of  flattery. 

There  is,  to  be  sure,  something  more  to  be  said. 
The  war  between  France  and  Prussia  had  several  im- 
portant effects.  The  unification  of  all  Germany  and 
the  creation  of  the  German  Empire  was  only  one.  This 
strong  empire  most  naturally  became  imbued  with  a 
desire  to  shine  as  a  World  Power  and  to  emulate  Great 
Britain  as  a  creator  and  promoter  of  overseas  colonies. 
France,  too,  rose  from  her  defeat  with  much  the  same 
ambition.  There  was  no  opportunity  for  either  people 
to  accompHsh  its  desire  in  South  America,  for  the  re- 
affirmation of  the  principles  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
by  the  United  States,  if  they  had  seemed  to  be  weak 
during  our  own  troubles  in  1861  to  1865,  later  supported 
morally  by  the  British  Government,  effectually  closed 
that  part  of  the  world  to  French  or  German  colonisation 
schemes.  It  seemed  at  that  time  as  if  Great  Britain, 
France,  Holland,  Portugal,  and  Spain  held  all  other 
regions  where  colonies  might  be  estabhshed.      We  do 


everybody's    AFRICA  239 

not  here  take  cognisance  of  what  several  European 
Powers  did  a  few  years  later  in  securing  larger  or  smaller 
tracts  of  Chinese  territory.  If  there  are  parts  of  Central 
Asia  where  European  colonists  might  prosper,  there  are 
Powers  having,  so  they  claim,  preponderant  interests 
which  prompt  them  to  say  to  all  others  "Keep  off!" 
Africa  was  the  only  section  left,  and  to  that  continent 
the  European  Powers  went  almost  en  masse. 

That  Africa  was  not  and  is  not,  save  in  the  certain 
parts  to  be  considered  later,  a  desirable  place  for  Euro- 
pean colonists  is  patent  from  the  fact  that  although  it 
has  been  for  centuries  at  Europe's  very  door,  acces- 
sible easily  in  every  way,  there  was  not,  until  the  last 
few  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  any  great  and 
popular  move  made  to  exploit  the  country.  It  was 
King  Leopold  II's  ambition  which  was  the  prime  mov- 
ing cause  that  led  to  the  scramble.  However  much  and 
justly  we  may  condemn  the  brutal  methods  for  carry- 
ing out  his  schemes  which  he  sanctioned,  and  for  which 
the  world  will  always  hold  him  primarily  and  solely 
responsible,  we  cannot  deny  that  he  combined  in  his 
own  person  remarkable  qualities  of  financier,  indus- 
triahst,  and  promoter.  While  we  may  inveigh  against 
his  methods,  we  cannot  keep  from  him  a  measure  of 
praise  for  carrying  out  his  scheme  to  success.  It  was 
certainly  so  successful  that  it  provoked  the  rivalry  of 
both  France  and  Germany  and  it  went  so  far  that  it 
eventually  compelled  Great  Britain  to  grant  him  access 
to  the  upper  Nile;  and  this  we  may  be  quite  sure  would 
never  have  been  done   from  merely  altruistic  feeling. 

Belgium  having  started  the  grab-game,  Germany  and 


240  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

France  were  prompt  in  taking  a  hand.  Portugal  at  first 
insisted  upon  having  a  belt  right  across  the  continent  to 
join  together  her  possessions  on  both  coasts.  This,  it 
need  hardly  be  said,  was  promptly  objected  to  by  Great 
Britain,  and  not  only  that,  but  Portugal  was  held  down 
to  much  smaller  shares  than  entirely  satisfied  her.  Ger- 
many took  as  much  as  possible  and  now  wishes  more, 
which  she  will  probably  get.  France's  plans  for  increas- 
ing her  holdings  in  Africa  had  been  already  suggested, 
and  there  was  little  opposition  raised  to  her  designs  upon 
the  whole  of  the  Sahara,  with  the  several  tracts,  already 
described,  reaching  down  to  the  Gulf  of  Guinea.  Great 
Britain  bestirred  itself,  but  it  was  too  late  to  overcome 
the  obstacle  raised  by  the  feelings  of  those  statesmen 
and  pubHcists  at  home  who  were  opposed  to  further 
territorial  expansion  in  Central  and  South  Africa.  Italy 
followed  the  lead  of  the  others  and  was  the  only  power 
to  co-operate  with  Great  Britain,  the  rest  combating 
Italian  efforts  at  every  point.  Italy's  wisdom  was 
rewarded  by  the  peaceful  acquisition  of  the  Red  Sea 
colony,  Eritrea.  Even  then  she  had  designs  upon 
Tripoli,  held  in  check  by  fear  of  war.  Yet  it  may  be 
that  Italy's  discretion  is  to  be  rewarded  by  securing 
Tripoli,  although  the  issue  of  the  present  war  is  not 
yet  determined,  and  this  may  be  a  sentimental  wish 
to  regain  a  possession  of  Old  Rome.  And  what  will 
be  the  fate  of  Abyssinia  ?  We  do  not  believe  that 
the  independence  of  that  kingdom  is  to  be  permanent, 
and  we  are  inclined  to  think  that  erelong  Italy  will 
be  further  rewarded  by  being  allowed  to  add  it  to 
Eritrea. 


EVERYBODYS    AFRICA  24I 

With  these  things  brought  about  for  Italy,  and 
France  guaranteed  a  free  hand  in  Morocco,  absolutely 
the  whole  of  Africa  —  with  the  exception  of  little 
Liberia  —  will  be  under  the  domination  of  Europe;  for 
the  authority  of  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  in  Egypt  may  be 
quietly  ignored.  But  to  retrace  our  steps  for  a  moment, 
we  must  comment  upon  a  most  daring  scheme  of  France. 
After  the  defeat  of  the  Italians  by  the  Abyssinians  and 
the  temporary  weakening  of  Great  Britain's  influence 
in  the  Eg^-ptian  Sudan,  because  of  the  overthrow  of  the 
Khahfa's  power  in  the  upper  Nile  region,  France  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  pushing  through  the  heart  of  Africa  to 
connect  her  possessions  —  now  known  as  the  Ubangi- 
Shari-Chad  Colony — with  her  Uttle  French  Somaliland 
Protectorate.  This  gave  rise  to  the  Fashoda  episode, 
and  pretty  nearly  brought  Great  Britain  and  France 
into  war  in  the  very  heart  of  Africa. 

The  list  of  international  agreements  and  conventions 
which  were  entered  into  by  the  European  Powers  for  the 
partition  of  Africa  makes  interesting  reading  of  a  certain 
kind;  although  the  disinterested  outsider  is  pretty  sure 
to  comment  upon  the  fact  that  no  African  State  was 
a  party  to  any  of  them.  The  natives'  rights  were 
absolutely  ignored  and  the  division  was  carried  on  as  if 
there  were  no  inhabitants  to  be  considered.  Reading 
that  Ust,  in  connection  with  comments  made  upon  the 
conditions  which  led  up  to  the  agreements  and  the  effects 
produced  in  certain  instances,  causes  a  smile  at  times 
when  we  note  how  national  ambition  was  thwarted.  An 
example  is  to  be  found  in  the  Anglo-Kongolese  agree- 
ment of  May   12,   1894,  whereby  King  Leopold   II's 


242  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

lease  (?)  of  certain  territories  in  the  western  basin  of  the 
upper  Nile,  extending  along  the  Nile  from  a  point  on 
Lake  Albert  Nyanza  to  Fashoda  and  westward  to  the 
Kongo-Nile  watershed,  was  recognised.  The  upsetting 
of  British  plans  for  a  monopoly  of  the  Nile  basin  calls 
for  no  further  comment. 

If  not  precisely  corollaries  to  what  has  just  been 
written,  Africa's  attractions  for  the  European  set- 
tler, for  the  sportsman,  and  for  the  tourist,  may  now 
be  discussed  briefly.  The  possibilities  for  the  merchant 
and  industrialist  are  deliberately  ignored,  for  they 
concern  classes  who  are  amply  supplied  with  informa- 
tion and  statistics  upon  which  they  rely  in  determining 
their  course  of  procedure.  This  aspect  of  Africa  is  one 
which  calls  for  esoteric  knowledge  and  its  consummation 
depends  largely  upon  the  spirit  of  the  authorities  govern- 
ing a  particular  region,  when  a  merchant  or  industrialist 
of  another  country  —  America,  for  example  —  seeks  to 
secure  for  himself  a  share  of  the  commerce  or  physical 
exploitation  of  that  region.  In  passing,  however,  it 
may  be  noted  that,  when  all  the  conditions  and  cir- 
cumstances of  the  case  are  given  their  due  weight  and 
a  reasonable  (unfortunately,  a  necessary)  allowance  is 
made  for  national,  class,  or  individual  jealousy,  the 
measure  of  success  achieved  by  citizens  of  the  United 
States  in  contributing  towards  the  physical,  industrial, 
and  agricultural  development  of  Africa  is  by  no  means 
contemptible;  and  persons  who  are  interested  in  such 
matters,  or  who  are  disposed  to  scout  that  last  statement 
as  being  unduly  optimistic,  are  commended  to  the  pub- 
lished returns  of  the  American  Custom  House  Service 


everybody's    AFRICA  243 

for  precise  information  as  to  materials  sent  to  Africa 
and  their  values.  But  the  opportunities  for  settler, 
sportsman,  and  tourist  come  within  the  realm  of 
speculation  and  therefore  are  not  necessarily  debarred 
here. 

As  has  been  already  stated  in  the  preceding  chapters, 
with  the  exception  of  less  than  half  a  dozen  ports 
along  both  the  west  and  the  east  coasts,  and  the 
higher  lands  of  the  interior,  but  in  regions  where 
other  conditions  are  not  attractive  (until  we  get  below 
about  the  tenth  degree  of  south  latitude),  there  is  com- 
paratively little  of  Africa  that  is  suited  to  the  needs  of 
the  European  settler;  and  we  think  we  may  safely  say 
that  Great  Britain  is  the  only  Power  which  really  has 
something  satisfactory  to  offer  such  immigrants.  We 
ought  to  interpolate  here  that  by  immigrants  we  intend 
to  limit  our  meaning  to  those  who  enter  one  country 
from  another  with  the  intention  of  settling  down  as 
permanent  residents,  who  intend  to  make  homes  for 
themselves  and  their  families,  who  expect  to  bring  up 
their  children  as  citizens  of  the  adopted  coimtry,  and 
who  are,  as  a  rule,  agriculturalists;  yet,  at  the  same 
time,  what  we  shall  say  applies,  other  things  being 
equal,  to  all  other  classes  who  enter  the  new  country 
with  the  purpose  of  making  it  their  permanent  home. 

The  east  coast  of  Africa  is,  in  our  opinion,  entirely 
imsuited  to  white  settlers  until  one  has  gone  well  down 
into  Natal.  Conditions  are  somewhat  better  along 
the  southwest  coast,  because  Portuguese  West  Africa 
and  German  South  West  Africa  are  by  no  means  im- 
possible places  of  abode  for  European  immigrants.    The 


244  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

best  part  of  the  whole  contment,  however,  is  to  be  found 
in  certain  sections  of  the  British  possessions,  the  Union  of 
South  Africa.  Not  only  are  physical  conditions  —  that 
is,  cUmate,  soil,  and  meteorology  —  admirably  suited 
to  the  needs  of  people  of  the  white  race,  but  the  develop- 
ment of  the  country  is  being  pushed  along  just  the  lines 
which  here  contribute  to  their  welfare  by  a  govern- 
ment that  is  determined  to  do  all  in  its  power  to  build 
up  a  dominion  which  shall  be  the  peer  of  the  other 
white,  self-governing,  colonial  realms  of  the  British 
Empire  —  the  Dominion  of  Canada  and  the  Australian 
Commonwealth. 

The  crown  lands,  or  what  we  Americans  would  call 
the  public  lands,  are  being  surveyed  and  allotted  to 
bona  fide  settlers  upon  terms  that  are  even  more  Uberal 
than  are  those  the  United  States  Government  grants  to 
actual  homestead  settlers;  although  some  objection 
has  been  raised  by  loyal  British  subjects  that  facilities 
are  made  too  easy  for  individual  or  corporation  wealth 
to  acquire  large  tracts  of  the  most  desirable  agricultural 
lands  —  a  process  which  inevitably  operates  to  deter  the 
man  with  limited  means  from  seeking  a  home.  The 
Government,  too,  is  giving  much  attention  to  agricultural 
subjects  in  their  widest  range,  through  commissions  of 
experts  whose  researches  and  conclusions  are  placed  at 
the  disposal  of  farmer,  fruit  grower,  or  experimenter 
without  fee.  Only  a  year  ago  an  entomological  com- 
mission was  appointed  by  the  Government  to  make 
thorough  investigation  into  the  ravages  of  certain 
destructive  insects.  The  personnel  of  that  commission 
was  such  as  must  command  the  respect  of  scientists  the 


Copyright,  Underu'nod  i*  U nderamtd .  S .  V . 

Native  Porters  (ari\(;  Anteloi'e  Meat  aiter  a  Hunt 

In  lare.e  sections  oj  the  AJrican  jungle  food  is  scarce, 

and  tnust  be  provided  bejorehand  in  this  way 


everybody's    AFRICA  245 

world  over  and  inspire  confidence  in  the  farmer  for  whose 
special  benefit  the  commission  worked;  for  it  was  not 
only  scientific  in  its  composition,  but  essentially  practical 
in  its  methods  and  results  as  well.  The  members  were 
drawn  from  various  parts  of  the  British  Empire — McGill 
University,  Montreal,  Canada,  was  represented  —  and 
their  combined  knowledge  and  experience  would  seem 
to  cover  the  ground  as  well  as  could  be  expected  of  any 
human  effort. 

Without  presuming  to  say  that  there  are  no  other 
parts  of  Africa  which  offer  reasonable  inducements 
to  European  settlers,  for  the  evidence  to  the  contrary 
is  quite  sufficient  to  refute  such  a  statement,  it  is 
entirely  reasonable  to  say  that,  as  conditions  now  are 
and  are  likely  to  be  for  some  years,  South  Africa  is  the 
most  attractive  part  of  the  continent  in  every  way.  Mr. 
Theodore  Roosevelt,  in  "African  Game  Trails,"  draws 
pen  and  ink  pictures  of  ranches  in  British  East  Africa 
which  tend  to  make  us  believe  that  this  part  of  the 
continent  is  a  desirable  locality  for  the  European  settler, 
but  the  evidence  is  not  conclusive. 

Before  considering  Africa  as  a  "happy  hunting 
ground,"  we  should  first  define  a  sportsman,  for  the 
word  is  often  outrageously  misused.  Such  a  man  is 
something  more  than  a  mere  killer  of  wild  animals  or  the 
slaughterer  of  birds  that  have  been  fattened  and  tamed 
in  "preserves";  and  the  true  sportsman  is,  or  ought  to 
be,  not  the  one  who  measures  his  success  solely  by  the 
size  of  his  "bag"!  In  North  America  we  have  suffered 
too  much  from  indiscriminate  slaughter  of  wild  animals 
to  be  willing  to  call  such  men  sportsmen,  such  as  are  the 


246  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

miscreants  who  prowl  about  the  bounds  of  the  Yellow- 
stone Park  hoping  to  get  a  shot  at  the  few  buffaloes  who 
now  stand  as  the  only  representatives  of  millions  killed 
by  "sportsmen." 

We  cannot  look  with  toleration  upon  some  of  the 
expeditions  to  Africa  that  have  been  made  simply  that 
the  "sportsman"  might  say  he  had  killed  so  many  ele- 
phants or  even  lions — of  that  kind  we  have  read  ad 
nauseam;  and  we  are  provoked  to  the  verge  of  anger 
when  we  read  of  the  great  "game  drive"  organised  for 
the  delectation  of  His  Royal  Highness  the  Duke  of 
Connaught,  when  a  vast  number  of  animals  (and  not 
destructive  or  noxious  ones)  were  simply  butchered  in 
cold  blood.  Nor  have  we  much  patience  with  some  of 
the  alleged  expeditions  to  kill  great  game  in  order  that 
the  collections  of  our  Natural  History  Museums  may 
be  enriched,  when  the  narratives  of  such  expeditions 
give  accounts  of  hundreds,  perhaps  thousands,  of  other 
animals  merely  killed  and  left  to  feed  hyenas  and 
beasts  of  prey  that  lack  courage  and  strength  to  provide 
for  themselves. 

If  a  sportsman  has  some  reasonable  object  and  legit- 
imate purpose,  he  will  still  find  plenty  of  elephants, 
giraffes,  hippopotamuses,  and  other  African  great  game 
to  give  him  muscular  exertion  and  test  the  steadiness 
of  his  nerves  as  he  faces  their  charge.  The  great 
Game  Reserves  of  British  East  Africa,  the  Northern 
and  the  Southern,  of  many  thousand  square  miles  in 
area,  are  one  of  the  well-conceived  and  wisely  adminis- 
tered efforts  on  the  part  of  the  British  Government  to 
do  at  least  something  to  prevent  the  utter  extinction  of 


everybody's    AFRICA  247 

the  great  animals.  Part  of  the  wisdom  displayed  lies 
in  the  choice  of  sections  of  the  country  which  are  not 
likely  to  be  of  great  value  for  agricultural  or  industrial 
purposes. 

A  goodly  portion  of  these  reserves  fall  within  the 
nyika  that  was  mentioned  in  Chapter  X.  The  North- 
em  Reserve  is  in  the  upper  part  of  the  colony,  above 
the  Guaso  Nyiro  River  and  east  of  Lake  Rudolf.  It 
reaches  up  to  the  Abyssinian  frontier,  and,  roughly 
estimated,  there  are  thirty-eight  thousand  square  miles 
in  it.  But  not  yet  being  properly  guarded,  it  suffers 
much  from  the  depredations  of  hunters,  who  are  not 
sportsmen,  coming  in  from  Abyssinia  to  kill  elephants 
wantonly  and  "run"  the  ivory  to  the  Red  Sea  coast 
at  French  or  Italian  ports.  It  is  a  wild  country,  torn  by 
vast  clefts  —  the  Rift  valley  is  one  —  with  many  lakes 
that  have  not  yet  been  properly  explored  and  rivers 
which  are  still  traced  on  the  map  with  broken  lines  beto- 
kening indefinite  knowledge.  There  are,  too,  a  number 
of  mountains  that  appeal  to  the  adventurous  explorer. 

The  Southern  Reserve  is  smaller  and  stretches  along 
the  southern  border  of  the  province,  a  mile  or  so  to  the 
north  of  the  Nairobi  railway  and  down  to  the  south- 
em  and  western  provincial  borders.  Germany,  like- 
wise, is  doing  something  commendable  in  this  effort  to 
protect  the  great  game  of  Africa  in  her  East  African 
Protectorate.  Then,  too,  as  will  have  been  noted  in 
reading  the  preceding  chapters,  there  are  other  places 
where  the  great  pachyderms,  the  lion,  and  many  other 
animals  are  still  to  be  found  in  sufficient  numbers  to 
leave  Africa  a  paradise  for  the  true  sportsman. 


248  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Mr.  Roosevelt  says,  of  the  Southern  Game  Reserve: 
"Next  morning  we  were  in  the  game  country,  and  as 
we  sat  on  the  seat  over  the  cow-catcher,  it  was  Hter- 
ally  like  passing  through  a  vast  zoological  garden. 
Indeed,  no  such  railway  journey  can  be  taken  on  any 
other  line  in  any  other  land.  At  one  time  we  passed  a 
herd  of  a  dozen  or  so  of  great  giraffes,  cows  and  calves, 
cantering  along  through  the  open  woods  a  couple  of 
hundred  yards  to  the  left  of  the  track.  Again,  still 
closer,  four  waterbuck  cows,  their  big  ears  thrown 
forward,  stared  at  us  without  moving  imtil  we  had 
passed.  Hartebeestes  were  everywhere;  one  herd  was 
on  the  track,  and  when  the  engine  whistled  they 
bucked  and  sprang  with  ungainly  agility  and  galloped 
clear  of  danger.  A  long-tailed,  straw-coloured  monkey 
ran  from  one  tree  to  another.  Huge  black  ostriches 
appeared  from  time  to  time.  Once  a  troop  of  impalla 
close  by  the  track  took  fright,  and  as  the  beauti- 
ful creatures  fled  we  saw  now  one  and  now  another 
bound  clear  over  the  high  bushes.  A  herd  of  zebra 
clattered  across  a  cutting  of  the  line  not  a  hundred  yards 
ahead  of  the  train;  the  whistle  hurried  their  progress, 
but  only  for  a  minute,  and  as  we  passed  they  were 
already  turning  round  to  gaze.  The  wild  creatures  were 
in  their  sanctuary  and  they  knew  it."  This  is  certainly 
attractive  to  the  keen,  true  sportsman  and  we  hope  no 
other  will  be  induced  to  make  an  effort  to  secure  trophies; 
also  that  he  will  know  exactly  where  to  place  those 
trophies  that  they  may  have  some  educational  value,  and 
not  be  simply  the  senseless  objects  of  that  desire  in  so 
many  human  beings  to  kill  something.     Mr.  George  H. 


everybody's    AFRICA  249 

Scull's  "Lassoing  Wild  Animals  in  Africa"  is  an  account 
of  "Buffalo"  Jones'  expedition  in  1910,  and  it  tells  of 
quite  a  different  phase  of  the  sportsman's  pleasure  in 
East  Africa.  It  is  a  book  that  appeals  strongly  to  every 
true  lover  of  dangerous  sport. 


CHAPTER  XV 

AMERICA'S  RELATIONS   WITH  AFRICA.    AFRICA 
IN  THE  FUTURE 

AS  "Sunset"  Cox  states  in  his  book,  "A  Search  for 
Winter  Sunbeams,"  it  was  not  long  after  the 
United  States  had  achieved  her  independence  and  had 
been  recognised  as  a  nation  that  she  felt  called  upon  to 
show  her  new  flag  in  African  waters  and  to  move  in 
the  matter  of  checking  the  outrageous  depredations  of  the 
Barbary  Corsairs.  Although  the  relations  between  the 
two  English-speaking  nations  are  now  almost  brotherly 
and  the  sentiment  of  both  Americans  and  Britons  strongly 
for  peace,  it  is  useless  to  close  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  in 
the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  until  long 
after  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth,  the  feeling  in  England 
was  generally  hostile  towards  the  United  States.  Cir- 
cumstances so  shaped  themselves  after  the  War  of  Ameri- 
can Independence  that  the  American  merchant  marine 
took  on  rapid  development  and  the  type  of  vessel 
flying  the  Stars  and  Stripes  became  a  serious  menace 
to  the  British  effort  to  keep  a  monopoly  of  the  Medi- 
terranean trade.  The  jealousy  which  this  success  of 
American  ships  created  found  expression  in  many  ways, 
and  one  of  •  them  was  the  afl&rmation  by  an  English 
statesman  that  if  there  were  no  Barbary  Corsairs  it 
would  pay  the  British  Government  to  subsidise  them 

250 


RELATIONS    WITH    AFRICA  251 

just  to  have  them  act  aggressively  in  crippling  the 
Yankee  merchant  service.  It  is  more  than  suspected 
that  some  of  the  captures  of  ships  and  the  harsh  treat- 
ment of  their  crews,  if  not  actually  instigated  by 
British  machinations,  were  made  possible  by  substantial 
contributions  of  money  and  munitions  of  war  supplied 
to  the  Corsairs  from  EngHsh  ports. 

There  is  an  interesting  volume,  entitled  "The  Sea- 
Wolves  of  the  Mediterranean,"  which  gives  the  story 
of  how  these  pirates  came  to  be  as  formidable  as  they 
undoubtedly  were;  but  the  reader  of  that  book  will  be 
likely  to  conclude  that  the  author  has  seen  fit  to  depict 
his  heroes  in  rather  bright  colours,  and  we  may  not, 
perhaps,  entirely  endorse  his  opinion  of  them.  If  any- 
one wishes  to  know  precisely  the  evolution  of  the  Bar- 
bary  Corsairs,  he  will  find  all  he  needs  in  that  book.  We 
are  interested  in  knowing  only  that  they  did  exist,  and 
that  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  they  were 
a  scourge  which  Europe  tolerated  for  such  a  long  time 
as  to  justify  the  charge  that  it  was  to. Europe's  disgrace 
that  these  creatures  were  permitted  to  go  so  long  un- 
pimished,  or  rather  without  being  absolutely  annihilated. 
Their  haunts  were  well  chosen,  both  offensively  and  de- 
fensively; for  the  rocky  coast  of  the  Mediterranean  from 
the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  to  Cape  Bon  (Tunis) ,  and  the  low 
shore  eastward  of  that  point,  where  the  water  is  shoal 
and  reefs  extend  far  off  shore,  make  an  almost  ideal 
place  for  such  pirates  to  carry  on  their  occupation, 
because  it  was  difficult  to  find  them  and  well-nigh  im- 
possible for  an  armed  vessel  of  any  size  to  follow  them 
into  their  refuges. 


252  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Had  the  Barbary  Corsairs  been  contented  with  piracy 
alone,  and  shown  even  a  trace  of  human  consideration 
for  the  unfortunate  people  who  came  to  them  as  a  part 
of  their  booty,  there  might,  perhaps,  be  less  to  say 
against  them.  But  religious  fanaticism,  self-stimulated 
to  frenzy,  and  racial  hatred,  aroused  by  what  we  must 
frankly  say  was  absolutely  an  unjust  act  of  the  Christian 
Spaniards,  had  so  much  to  do  with  influencing  these  Sea- 
Wolves  that  their  treatment  of  captives  was  inhuman 
to  a  degree  almost  indescribable.  We  do  not  mean  to 
intimate  that  the  pitiful  condition  of  the  Christian  slaves 
in  those  Barbary  States  was  not  known  throughout 
Europe,  or  that  it  did  not  arouse  great  sympathy  in  all 
parts  of  Christendom;  that  would  be  unjust.  For  as 
early  as  1199  there  was  founded  in  Paris  the  "Order  of 
the  Holy  Trinity  and  Redemption  of  Captives."  Its 
members  were  called  Fathers  of  the  Redemption  or 
Mathurins,  from  the  church  of  St.  Mathurin,  and  they 
devoted  their  lives  to  effecting  the  ransom  of  captives 
and  the  alleviation  of  their  deplorable  misery;  the  lay- 
following  was  large,  wealthy,  and  influential.  But  it 
seems  almost  incredible  and  certainly  inexcusable  that 
Europe  should  so  long  have  tolerated  the  existence  of 
the  Scourges  and  all  that  they  stood  for.  Expeditions 
were  sent  against  them  but  there  was  not  that  con- 
certed action,  directed  by  intelligent  zeal  and  competent 
officers,  which  alone  could  have  effected  their  extermi- 
nation prior  to  the  early  years  of  the  eighteenth  century 
and  the  later  development  of  warships. 

Long  before  the  War  of  Independence  there  were 
American  citizens  held  as  slaves  in  North  Africa.     But 


RELATIONS    WITH    AFRICA  253 

when  those  pirates  had  leamt  to  know  our  flag  as  the 
ensign  of  a  new  nation  and  one  they  assumed  to  be  weak, 
they  thought  our  merchant  ships  would  be  easily  cap- 
tured; and  for  a  long  time  this  conclusion  was  justified. 
Between  1783,  the  year  the  independence  of  the  United 
States  was  recognised,  and  1801,  when  Commodore 
Richard  Dale  was  sent  with  a  squadron  of  four  vessels 
to  begin  active  measures  against  the  pirates,  we  have 
records  of  a  great  number  of  captures,  and  we  know 
that  the  prisoners  were  usually  treated  with  characteris- 
tic cruelty;  for  among  those  unfortunates  were  univer- 
sity graduates  and  others  possessing  suflScient  literary 
ability  to  tell  the  story  of  their  experiences  as  slaves 
most  convincingly,  when  the  opportunity  came,  with 
release,  to  do  so. 

We  should  like  to  tell  again  here  the  story  of 
America's  castigation  of  those  Barbary  Corsairs  while 
yet  in  her  infancy  as  a  nation.  The  episodes  display 
individual  and  concerted  bravery  and  the  account 
would  recaU  names  of  which  we  are  justly  proud  — 
Dale,  who  had  been  Paul  Jones'  first  lieutenant  in  the 
famous  fight  between  the  Bon  Homme  Richard  and  the 
Serapis  in  1779,  Bainbridge,  whose  first  command  in 
Mediterranean  waters  was  the  frigate  George  Wash- 
ington, the  two  Barrons,  Sterrett,  Porter,  Preble,  and 
so  many  other  gallant  naval  ofl&cers,  and,  not  forgetting 
civilians,  who  actually  suffered  more  mentally  as  well  as 
physically  than  did  the  military,  Eaton,  Cathcart,  John 
Adams;  but  it  is  not  well  to  introduce  the  "Twice- 
told  Tale."  It  was  not  until  18 17  that  what  is  called 
the  final  peace  with  the  Barbary  Corsairs  was  secured, 


254  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

and  then  only  when  they  had  been  thoroughly  scourged. 
''Trouble  with  the  Barbary  States,  so  far  as  concerned 
the  United  States,  was  now  at  an  end,  except  occa- 
sional trivial  difficulties  with  consuls.  But  it  was 
considered  prudent  to  keep  a  naval  force  in  the  Medi- 
terranean for  several  years.  The  need  of  this  is  alluded 
to  in  nearly  all  the  annual  messages  of  the  presidents 
down  to  1830."* 

As  a  nation  we  at  first  made  the  mistake  of  following 
the  example  of  Europe  in  dealing  with  these  creatures 
and  tried  to  purchase  peace  and  protection  for  our 
citizens  from  people  who  had  not  one  grain  of  truth  or 
honour  as  individuals,  and  as  communities  no  respect 
whatever  for  the  obligations  of  a  treaty.  When,  however, 
the  mistake  of  this  course  became  apparent,  the  con- 
trary method,  and  the  only  right  one,  was  followed  so 
strenuously  as  to  have  the  direct,  salutary  effect  upon 
the  actual  offenders  and  the  indirect,  wholesome  one 
of  making  Europe  bestir  herseljE.  Contemplating  the 
episode  of  America's  relations  with  the  Barbary  Corsairs 
as  a  whole,  there  was  nothing  to  make  the  people  of  the 
United  States  blush  with  shame  when  looking  back  at 
the  efforts  of  their  navy  to  suppress  the  nuisance,  and 
the  first  —  and  as  is  to  be  hoped  the  only  —  appearance 
of  the  American  flag  in  transatlantic  waters,  borne 
with  martial  intent,  was  creditable.  One  phase  of  the 
slave  trade  was  certainly  checked.  If  we  cannot  say 
that  since  181 7  there  have  been  absolutely  no  more 
Christian  white  slaves  held  in  the  Barbary  States  —  for 
there  have  been  occasionally  such  prisoners  —  yet  rarely 

*  "  Our  Navy  and  the  Barbary  Corsairs,"  Gardner  W.  Allen. 


RELATIONS    WITH    AFRICA  255 

has  their  treatment  been  marked  by  the  cruelties  of  a 
himdred  years  and  more  ago,  and  always  their  release 
has  been  speedily  achieved;  either  by  punitive  military 
expeditions  or  payment  of  ransom. 

Later,  but  not  until  after  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  United  States  took  its  part  somewhat  per- 
functorily in  the  suppression  of  the  African  slave  trade, 
when  heathen  blacks  were  the  victims  of  rapacity  and 
of  cruelties  which  put  to  shame  the  miseries  of  the 
white  slaves  chained  to  the  rowing-bench  in  a  Moorish 
galley,  confined  in  filthy  dungeons,  or  held  as  menials 
in  the  home  of  a  brutal  Mussulman  master.  Slavery 
is  a  topic  which  presents  no  attractions  however  we 
may  look  at  it;  yet  it  is  a  condition,  a  phase  of  human 
society,  that  asserts  itself  no  matter  how  far  we  go  back 
in  history.  Without  seeking  to  support  this  statement 
with  references  to  other  portions  of  the  globe,  we  may 
say  that  from  the  very  earliest  dates  of  competent 
history  we  know  it  has  been  the  custom  in  Africa  for 
victors  to  hold  their  himian  prizes  of  war  as  slaves, 
as  well  as  to  acquire  such  property  by  purchase,  and 
these  conditions  exist  to  this  very  day  in  all  parts  of  the 
continent  where  European  Powers  have  not  made  and 
enforced  the  manumission  of  domestic  slaves  obligatory 
or  decreed  that  their  offspring  should  be  absolutely 
free.  In  some  of  the  Central  African  countries,  or  rather 
among  some  of  the  tribes,  where  cannibalism  has  not 
yet  been  effectually  stamped  out,  it  is  the  rule  for  slaves 
to  be  fattened  and  eaten.  Indeed,  it  is  often  contended 
by  these  man-eating  peoples  that  in  no  circumstances 
must  a  slave  be  allowed  to  die  a  natural  death,  for  if 


256  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

he  were  to  do  so,  his  ghost  would  inevitably  return  and 
murder  his  master,  —  a  direful  possibility  that  is  obvi- 
ated safely  by  the  butchering  and  eating  of  the  slave. 
Although  just  how  the  spirit,  or  ghost,  of  the  victim  is 
eliminated  by  murder  and  yet  persists  in  the  case  of 
natural  death  has  not  been  made  clear  by  competent 
students. 

The  odious  distinction  of  having  been  the  first  person 
to  interest  the  English  people  in  the  negro  slave  trade 
belongs  to  Sir  John  Hawkins.  "In  1562  he  transported 
a  large  cargo  of  Africans  to  Hispaniola  (Haiti).  The  rich 
returns  of  sugar,  ginger,  and  pearls  attracted  the  notice 
of  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  five  years  later  she  took  shares 
in  a  new  expedition,  though  the  commerce,  on  the  part 
of  the  English,  in  Spanish  ports,  was  by  the  law  of  Spain 
illicit,  as  well  as  by  the  law  of  morals  detestable."*  It 
is  not  fair  to  the  American  colonies  first,  and  later  to 
the  young  United  States,  to  say  that  they  willingly 
accepted  negro  slavery.  In  other  British  colonies  such 
slaves  were  held  before  there  was  one  in  the  British 
colonies  of  North  America  which  subsequently  became 
the  United  States;  and  in  those  same  colonies  slaves 
were  owned  after  negro  slavery  ceased  to  exist  in  the 
United  States,  1863.  In  August,  16 19,  a  Dutch  man-of- 
war  entered  the  James  River,  Virginia,  and  landed 
twenty  negroes  who  were  offered  for  sale.  This  merchan- 
dise was  not  made  welcome,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  had  the  vessel  not  been  a  warship,  flying  the  flag 
of  a  friendly  State,  the  opposition  to  the  introduction 
and  sale  of  these  human  beings  might  have  been  insistent 
*  Bancroft,  "  History  of  the  United  States." 


RELATIONS    WITH    AFRICA  257 

to  the  final  point.  Nor  were  subsequent  similar  adven- 
tures of  forcing  negro  slaves  into  the  colonies  received 
with  favour  for  some  time.  Indeed,  the  sentiment  of 
the  colonists  was  generally  and  strongly  opposed  to  the 
traffic,  and  even  after  the  War  of  Independence  the  wish 
of  Maryland  and  Virginia  was  to  abolish  negro  slavery. 

But  it  was  contended,  and  with  some  semblance  of 
reason,  it  must  be  admitted,  that  in  the  extreme  Southern 
States  it  was  impossible  in  those  early  days  to  cultivate 
the  fields  with  white  labourers,  altogether  insufficient 
in  numbers  and  ill-suited  to  the  task  physically,  while 
Indian  labour  was  simply  impossible.  The  tilling  of 
the  Southern  cotton  fields,  picking  the  lint,  cleaning  it, 
and  preparing  it  for  market  could  be  done  satisfactorily, 
at  least,  by  the  ignorant  slaves;  but  the  industries  of 
the  North  demanded  of  the  workmen  a  fair  measure  of 
intelligence  not  found  inherently  in  the  negro  and  not 
to  be  given  him  through  the  possible  education  then 
provided.  Where  slavery  was  profitable,  therefore,  it 
was  tolerated  before  it  was  welcomed,  and  since  house 
servants  may  be  said  to  be  able  to  do  their  work  without 
the  need  of  much  natural  intelligence,  there  were  negro 
slaves  in  that  capacity  as  far  north  even  as  Massa- 
chusetts. At  one  period,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  and  for 
some  time,  there  were  such  domestic  slaves  in  all  the  thir- 
teen colonies,  in  addition  to  the  field  hands  owned  in 
considerable  numbers  in  some  of  the  other  colonies. 

But  most  of  the  colonists  realised  that  it  was  unprofit- 
able as  well  as  impolitic  to  hold  slaves,  and  before  the 
War  of  Independence  their  representative  officials  (not 
the  Government  appointees)  were  protesting  against  the 


258  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

determination  of  the  British  Government  to  increase 
the  number  of  slaves  in  the  face  of  such  colonial  legisla- 
tive action  as  the  following:  Massachusetts,  in  1641, 
in  her  "Body  of  Liberties/'  declared  that  there  should 
never  be  any  bond  slavery,  villeinage,  or  captivity  in 
the  colony,  "unless  it  be  lawful  captives  taken  in  just 
wars,  or  such  strangers  as  willingly  sell  themselves  or  are 
sold  to  us."  In  1652  Rhode  Island  passed  this  resolu- 
tion: "No  black  mankind  or  white  shall  be  held  to  service 
longer  than  ten  years."  We  are  more  than  half  inclined 
to  laugh  at  the  sophistry  which  led  many  of  the  Puritan 
slave-owners  to  seek  to  quiet  their  consciences  by  assert- 
ing stoutly  that  America  would  confer  benefit  upon 
Africa  by  fostering  and  even  increasing  the  slave  trade; 
on  the  principle  that  one  slave  brought  under  Christian 
influences  was  better  than  a  thousand  free  heathen  in 
the  wilds  of  Africa. 

In  colonial  days,  and  until  just  before  the  culmination 
of  differences  in  the  Revolution,  the  royal  governors 
were  charged  to  keep  their  markets  open  for  the  sale  of 
negro  slaves,  to  stimulate  the  colonists  to  buy  them, 
and  every  measure  adopted  by  the  colonial  legislatures 
to  restrict  that  traffic  was  rendered  inoperative  by  the 
royal  veto.  In  December,  1770,  the  King  of  England, 
George  III,  over, his  own  signature,  issued  instructions 
to  the  governor  of  Virginia  commanding  him,  "upon 
pain  of  the  highest  displeasure,  to  assent  to  no  law  by 
which  the  importation  of  slaves  should  be  in  any  respect 
prohibited  or  obstructed."  Virginia  demurred  vehe- 
mently to  this  royal  interference  with  what  was  even 
then  contended  was  a  right  in  the  matter  of  self -govern- 


RELATIONS    WITH    AFRICA  259 

ment,  and  so  did  all  the  other  colonies  to  the  principle 
for  which  His  Majesty  was  asserting  himself.  After  the 
Revolution  even,  Maryland  and  Virginia  opposed  negro 
slavery,  and  we  may  note  the  attitude  of  their  leading 
statesmen  and  scholars.  It  was  not  until  tobacco  plant- 
ing became  the  industry  of  the  former  and  sympathy 
was  keen  in  the  latter  that  this  form  of  slavery  attained 
the  importance  of  an  established  institution. 

But  there  was  another  form  of  slavery  existing  in  the 
American  colonies  which  has  no  direct  bearing  upon 
Africa,  and  yet  must  be  mentioned  here  in  order  that 
a  properly  comprehensive  view  of  conditions  affecting 
the  African  slave  trade  may  be  had.  This  form  of 
slavery  is  what  was  called  ''indentured  servitude." 
Boys  and  girls,  men  and  women,  were  bound  out  as 
servants  for  a  term  of  years  and  became,  to  all  intents 
and  purposes,  the  slaves  of  their  masters  upon  payment 
by  the  latter  of  a  "bonus"  that  was  easily  juggled  into 
purchase  money.  Sometimes  the  child  was  "boimd 
out"  by  its  parents,  who  received  a  part  of  the  bonus, 
to  be  a  servant,  lodged,  clothed,  and  fed,  for  a  term  of 
years.  Often  this  binding  out  was  a  form  of  punish- 
ment ordered  by  the  State  for  crime  or  misdemeanour 
that  to-day  would  be  attended  to  in  a  reform  school. 
Not  unfrequently  the  man  or  woman  bound  himself 
voluntarily  in  order  to  secure  passage  to  the  New  World, 
in  the  hope  of  bettering  his  condition  when  the  term  of 
indenture  had  been  completed.  Too  often  the  adults 
sent  out  to  this  "indentured  servitude"  were  most  un- 
desirable as  citizens  for  the  colonies;  frequently  they 
were  criminals,   the  scourings  of   prisons  or  brothels, 


26o  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

and  their  coming  was  usually  resented  hotly.  As  the 
colonies  grew  in  population  and  desirable  house  servants 
became  scarce,  the  demand  for  these  indentured  servants, 
at  any  rate  the  better  ones,  increased  beyond  the  supply 
and  kidnapping  was  resorted  to  in  the  mother  country. 

Yet  even  such  shameful  measures  were  not  sufficient 
to  supply  the  demand,  and  there  was,  seemingly,  no 
recourse  but  to  sanction  and  even  stimulate  the  impor- 
tation of  more  and  more  negro  slaves.  Thus  it  will  be 
understood  that  this  holding  of  white  slaves  had  a  con- 
siderable bearing  upon  negro  slavery.  It  is  interesting 
to  note  that  the  Pennsylvania  Quakers,  who  were  always 
vociferously  opposed  to  African  slavery,  were  yet  among 
the  leaders  in  patronising  this  "indentured  servitude." 
In  1696  it  was  estimated  that  there  were  more  inden- 
tured servants  in  Pennsylvania  than  in  all  the  rest  of 
the  colonies  put  together,  and  it  should  be  remembered, 
too,  that  these  were  nothing  more  nor  less  than  white 
slaves,  because  their  term  of  servitude  was  rarely  closed 
in  fact  at  the  date  stipulated  in  the  articles  of  indenture ; 
either  moral  suasion  or  debt  was  used  as  a  coercive 
club  to  compel  renewal  of  servitude  almost  indefinitely. 

But  the  opposition  to  negro  slavery,  which  we  have 
seen  was  actively  sincere  and  earnestly  expressed  in  the 
colonies,  grew  in  force  and  in  strength  of  expression 
after  the  formation  of  the  Union;  but  now  it  was  heard 
more  to  the  north  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line,  the  boun- 
dary between  Pennsylvania  and  Maryland  which  divided 
the  free  and  the  slave  states.  It  was  the  beginning  of 
the  movement  for  the  abolition  of  negro  slavery,  and 
although  the  effort  was  at  first  directed  towards  the 


RELATIONS    WITH    AFRICA  261 

suppression  of  kidnapping  blacks  in  Africa,  their  trans- 
portation to  the  United  States  in  those  "hells,"  the 
slave-ships,  and  their  sale  in  America,  it  received  some 
support  from  regions  that  later  evinced  most  uncom- 
promising opposition  to  the  central  government's  inter- 
ference with  states'  rights  to  hold  slaves,  and  to  the 
liberating  of  slaves  already  purchased  or  owned  from 
birth  by  southern  slaveholders.  If  we  are  compelled  to 
admit,  and  the  confession  causes  a  blush  of  shame,  that 
the  effort  of  the  United  States  in  the  suppression  of  the 
African  slave  trade  was  in  the  beginning  and  for  three- 
quarters  of  a  century  not  a  mighty  one,  we  may  justly 
point  with  some  pride  to  the  fact  that  when  the  people 
of  the  United  States  became  convinced  that  this  blot 
must  be  effaced  they  paid  for  their  conviction  with  men 
and  means  most  imselfishly,  and  did  not  hesitate,  for  a 
thrilling  moment  in  history,  to  face  the  possibility  of 
breaking  up  the  Union. 

In  1784  an  unsuccessful  effort  was  made  in  Congress 
to  provide  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  after  the  year  1800. 
This  was  not  done  through  a  special  bill,  but  as  a  "  rider  " 
to  a  bill  providing  for  the  admission  of  territories  as 
states,  etc.,  and  the  fact  speaks  volumes  for  the  care 
which  the  abolitionists  had  to  take  to  keep  from  arous- 
ing too  vigorous  antagonism.  Ten  years  later,  1794, 
the  first  oflScial  step  was  taken  along  the  pathway  lead- 
ing to  the  suppression  of  the  African  slave  trade,  and, 
as  a  consequence,  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  United 
States.  At  that  time  the  North  demanded  and  obtained 
the  passing  by  Congress  of  a  law  for  the  suppression  of 
the  slave  trade,  which  contained  this  provision:    No 


262  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

citizen  and  no  foreigner  was  to  be  permitted  to  build  or 
equip  ships  in  any  United  States  port  for  the  slave  trade 
of  foreign  countries.  Unfortunately  the  invention  of 
the  cotton-gin  just  at  that  time  gave  such  an  impetus 
to  the  cultivation  of  cotton  that  the  demand  for  slaves 
could  not  be  supplied  in  the  country.  Liberated  slaves 
were  seized  and  taken  South  for  sale,  and  because  there 
was  lacking  a  firm  determination  on  the  part  of  the 
Government  to  enforce  the  law  of  1794,  the  building  and 
equipping  of  ships,  in  Northern  ports,  went  on  almost 
openly.  In  May,  1800,  a  more  stringent  law  was  passed, 
and  ''vessels  bearing  commissions  from  the  United 
States  were  empowered  to  make  a  prize  of  any  ship 
found  violating  the  law."* 

Yet  little  was  done  for  more  than  half  a  century 
because  domestic  politics  prevented  the  champions  of 
abolition  carrying  out  their  humane  plans,  lest  insistence 
might  bring  about  disunion.  When  the  time  came,  how- 
ever, the  necessary  steps  were  taken,  and  since  1865, 
whenever  the  opportunity  has  offered  itself,  the  voice  of 
the  people  of  the  United  States  has  been  clear  and  unmis- 
takable for  the  suppression  of  African  slavery.  Aside 
from  this  and  the  interest  taken  in  the  negro  colony  of 
Liberia  there  has  been  little  in  America's  relations  with 
Africa  to  call  for  comment.  The  feeling  in  the  country 
about  conditions  in  the  Kongo  has  been  rather  the  ex- 
pression of  philanthropy,  individual  or  associate,  than 
official,  for  it  could  not  well  be  the  latter.  That  the 
United  States  is  looked  upon  as  being  a  World  Power, 
in  the  sense  that  all  questions  of  international  impor- 
*McMasters,  "History  of  the  People  of  the  United  States." 


RELATIONS    WITH    AFRICA  263 

tance  have  an  interest  for  her,  is  indicated  by  the  sugges- 
tion that  her  voice  be  heard  in  the  pending  (September, 
191 1)  dispute  between  France  and  Germany  concerning 
Morocco.  In  the  event  of  a  settlement  of  that  contro- 
versy without  recourse  to  war,  as  seems  most  probable 
while  this  is  being  written,  it  may  be  possible  that  the 
United  States  will  be  invited  to  sign  the  agreement  recog- 
nising France's  absolute  supremacy  in  Morocco  —  such 
a  course  has  been  suggested  —  but  to  do  so  would  seem 
to  be  a  departure  from  the  recognised  and  wise  policy 
of  this  country  to  refrain  from  taking  any  active  part 
in  matters  wherein  the  rights  of  European  Powers  are 
paramount. 

The  relations  of  the  United  States  with  Africa  have 
been  mainly  in  the  way  of  Christian  missions  and  edu- 
cation, and  these  are  her  only  present  duty.  The  devel- 
opment of  commerce  and  the  exploitation  of  industrial 
enterprise  are  the  right  of  every  man  who  chooses  to 
interest  himself  in  them.  Such  an  investor  has  merely  to 
overcome  any  foreign  jealousy  that  may  exist,  and  he 
may  feel  that  his  government  will  see  to  it  that  he  is  not 
unlawfully  discriminated  against  in  the  matter  of  having 
a  "fair  chance."  The  fact  that  railway  and  mining 
machinery  and  supplies  have  been  sent  to  Africa  from 
America  indicates  that  either  the  quality  is  superior  or 
the  price  lower  than  Europe  offers,  and  it  is  an  induce- 
ment to  others  to  try  for  a  share  of  business  that  is  only 
just  in  its  beginning.  We  may  note,  however,  that  it 
is  hardly  satisfactory  to  home  purchasers  of  American 
watches,  and  thousands  of  other  articles  as  well, 
to  be  told  that  in  South  Africa  he  can  buy  these  Ameri- 


264  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

can  products  at  less  than  he  pays  at  home.  But  this  is 
merely  one  of  the  beauties  of  a  high  protective  tariff. 

Of  the  Coming  Africa  it  is  not  so  easy  to  speculate  as  it 
is  to  speak  of  China  in  the  future,  because  in  the  former 
case  we  have  to  consider  the  problems  that  face  the 
numerous  European  peoples  who  have  annexed  the  land 
and  must  try  to  mould  the  natives  so  that  they  shall  be 
able  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  new  and  strange  civili- 
sation, whereas  in  the  latter  we  contemplate  the  effort 
of  an  intelligent,  already  highly  cultured  people  to  change 
their  condition  and  voluntarily  transform  their  own  civil- 
isation. In  Africa  there  are  grave  dangers  facing  the 
intruders  who  have  grabbed  the  whole  continent,  no 
matter  how  generously  we  judge  their  motives.  One 
of  these  dangers  has  been  suggested  by  the  recent  (Sep- 
tember, 191 1)  episode  which  has  bulked  so  largely  in 
our  journals  for  many  weeks  under  the  heading  "The 
Morocco  Question."  In  this,  for  some  time,  there  seemed 
about  to  be  confirmed  the  depressingly  pessimistic  fore- 
cast of  an  intelligent  Chinese  who  declared  that  when 
there  was  not  left  another  nook  or  comer  of  the  earth  for 
the  peoples  of  Europe  to  grab  they  would  fall  to  fighting 
among  themselves,  seeking  to  take  from  each  other  what 
had  been  seized  from  somebody  else.  But  if  in  this  par- 
ticular case,  the  cloud  blows  away  without  destructive 
effect  it  will  largely  be  due  to  the  fact  that  financiers  have 
pronounced  against  war  between  Germany  and  France 
over  such  a  small  matter  as  the  mastership  of  Morocco 
and  the  giving  up  of  a  slice  of  the  Kongo  region. 

Yet  the  matter  brings  up  the  question  whether  or 
not  there  is  danger  of  a  recurrence  of  similar  conditions 


RELATIONS    WITH    AFRICA  265 

in  some  other  part  of  Africa.  Will  such  episodes  as 
Fashoda,  Morocco,  the  greater  Egyptian  problem,  and  a 
host  of  petty  ones  (we  are  not  thinking  of  troubles  be- 
tween natives  and  European  intruders)  continue  to  be 
adjusted  without  recourse  to  "the  'arbitrament  of  war,' 
a  specious  phrase,  for  war  settles  nothing  but  mihtary 
superiority,  and  that  only  for  the  time  being?"* 

We  must  admit  that  the  partition  of  Africa  puts  the 
continent  into  the  hands  of  those  who  are,  at  present 
certainly,  better  able  than  the  aborigines  and  natives  to 
develop  it  and  make  it  what  it  is  well  adapted  to  become 
again,  as  it  was  called  three  thousand  years  ago,  the 
granary  of  the  world,  as  well  as  the  source  of  supply  for 
food  products  incalculable  in  quantity  and  almost  inex- 
pressible in  variety,  and  of  other  materials,  raw  and 
finished,  which  shall  contribute  to  the  necessities,  the 
comforts,  the  luxuries  of  life.  But  this  development 
depends  so  much  upon  the  ability  and  desire  of  the 
exploiters  to  live  together  in  peace  that  disquieting 
apprehension  will  creep  in  when  we  contemplate  the 
narrow  escapes  of  the  past  and  the  danger  of  greater 
friction  as  these  interests  draw  closer  and  closer  together 
and  competition  becomes  keener  and  keener.  It  is  but 
the  expression  of  personal  opinion,  yet  not  that  of  a 
single  individual  by  any  means,  to  say  that  the  future 
of  Africa  is  a  brilliant  possibility  and  one  in  which  it 
should  be  the  pride  of  many  young  men  and  young 
women  emigrants  from  the  homelands  of  Europe  to  take 
an  active  part.    As  the  railways  go  creeping  out  into 

•See  The  Nineteenth  Century,  July,  191 1;  article  by  Rear-Admiral 
Casper  F.  Goodrich,  U.S.N. 


266  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

the  interior  from  the  coast  on  the  north,  south,  east, 
and  west,  opening  up  to  the  influence  of  civilisation  great 
tracts  of  forest,  broad  stretches  of  fertile  plain,  deserts 
that  modem  science  can,  sometimes  at  any  rate,  trans- 
form into  productive  gardens,  so  must  that  same  civili- 
sation seek  to  overcome  its  own  many  weaknesses  and 
try  to  remember  that  Africa,  too,  is  a  part  of  God's  good 
earth,  whose  peoples  are  His  handiwork  and  each  one  of 
them  entitled  to  live. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
WHITE  MAN'S  AFRICA  AND  THE  AFRICAN  ISLANDS 

YES,  it  is  probably  to  be  the  White  Man's!  It  is 
strange  how  many  legends  of  the  natives  tell  of 
an  original  white  progenitor.  This  is  the  account  of 
creation  that  is  given  by  one  of  the  interesting  peoples 
of  southwestern  Africa:  "  There  was  once  a  wonderful 
tree  called  Omumborombongo.  From  it  came  forth  all 
the  living  creatures,  great  and  small,  human  and  brute; 
but  it  grew  in  the  time  so  long  ago  that  there  was  not 
any  light,  all  was  darkness.  Then  a  Damara  lit  a  fire, 
and  the  brightness  so  frightened  the  zebras,  gnus,  giraffes, 
and  all  the  great  wild  creatures  that  they  fled  away  into 
the  forest.  But  the  oxen,  sheep,  dogs,  and  other  domestic 
animals  were  not  frightened,  either  when  they  saw  the 
bright  light  that  dazzled  their  eyes,  or  when  they  gazed, 
for  the  first  time,  upon  the  face  of  man,  and  they  clustered 
fearlessly  together  about  him;  so  these  have  ever  since 
been  man's  friends.  Later,  when  the  white  man  came, 
all  the  creatures  felt  that  he  was  their  superior,  and  even 
the  domestic  animals  were  afraid  of  him,  although  these 
latter  did  not  always  run  away."  This  is  a  very  brief 
synopsis  of  one  of  the  folk-lore  tales  of  the  Ova-Herero 
tribe;  the  people  are  still  living  in  German  South  West 
Africa. 

It  is  suggestive  to  note  how  often,  in  these  folk-lore 

267 


268  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

tales  of  the  black  people  of  Africa,  there  is  mentioned  — 
always  as  belonging  far  back  in  the  dim  past  —  a  white 
man  from  whom  the  people  originally  sprang;  but  they 
almost  invariably  add  that  they  themselves,  or  their 
more  recent  ancestors,  were  turned  black  by  the  sun.  To 
cite  but  one  more,  quite  new  instance :  In  Central  Africa 
there  is  an  important  nation,  the  Bushongo,  who  have 
been  referred  to  by  some  explorers,  who  do  not  seem  to 
have  become  very  well  acquainted  with  them,  as  Bakuba. 
They  now  hve  in  a  very  extensive  territory  south  of  the 
Sankuru  River,  and  between  the  Kasai  and  the  upper 
Sankuru  Rivers  —  4°  to  8°  S.,  20°  to  24°  E.  in  the  Bel- 
gian Kongo.  They  are  a  most  interesting,  friendly,  and, 
by  comparison  with  all  other  black  people  of  any  part  of 
the  continent,  the  most  cultured  of  the  Africans.  The 
particulars  given  here  are  epitomised  from  a  long  account 
read  by  the  Danish-British  explorer,  Mr.  E.  Torday, 
before  the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  London  (see  the 
Society's  Journal  for  July,  1910). 

The  name,  Bakuba,  employed  by  travellers  who  had 
not  had  the  same  opportunities  for  prolonged  and  close 
study  of  these  people,  that  Mr.  Torday  gave  them,  is  a 
Baluba  word  and  appears  to  mean  "People  of  the  Light- 
ning."  It  may  be  recognised  as  a  transformation  or 
paraphrase  of  Bushongo,  meaning  "People  of  the 
Throwing  Knife."  Now  those  Balubas  were  undoubt- 
edly in  possession  of  the  coimtry  before  the  Bushongos, 
who  conquered  the  aborigines  (the  word  is  used  merely 
for  convenience  and  without  pretence  at  scientific 
accuracy),  because  of  their  phenomenal  prowess  in 
using  that  remarkable  weapon  of  attack.     Their  skill, 


WHITE    man's    AFRICA  269 

displayed  both  in  the  swiftness  of  the  throw  and  in  the 
accuracy  of  aim,  was  not  ineptly  likened  by  the  Balubas 
to  the  swift  flash  and  deadly  effect  of  the  lightning,  and 
therefore  they  dubbed  these  invincible  people  Bakuha. 

The  Bushongo  people  are  not  strong  in  numbers,  and 
ethnologically  are  opposed  to  certain  Basongo  Meno  and 
Baluba  tribes  that  have  been  incorporated  into  the 
Bushongo  nation  and  have  adopted  Bushongo  customs 
more  or  less  completely.  These  Bushongo  people  "are 
remarkable  for  the  manner  in  which  they  have  preserved 
their  tribal  history,  including  a  list  of  one  hundred  and 
twenty-one  paramount  chiefs."  According  to  this  his- 
tory, corroborated  by  many  cultural  details,  they  are 
immigrants  from  the  north,  probably  from  the  Shari 
basin.  The  emigration  took  place  under  the  fifth  of 
their  recorded  rulers,  and  their  empire  reached  its 
height  under  the  ninety-third  king,  named  Shamba, 
who  is  regarded  as  the  great  culture-hero  of  the  tribe. 

"  This  empire  was  ruled  by  means  of  a  highly 
developed  hierarchy  of  officials,  more  elaborate  than 
has  been  recorded  of  any  other  African  people,  which 
was  in  full  activity  at  the  time  of  the  first  advent  of  the 
white  man,  though  it  is  now  showing  signs  of  decay. 
Next  to  the  possession  of  a  history  and  an  organised 
system  of  government  this  people  is  distinguished  by  a 
remarkable  artistic  sense  which  finds  expression  in  the 
proficiency  with  which  they  pursue  certain  crafts,  notably 
embroidery  and  wood-carving.  This  proficiency  has 
been  noted  by  other  travellers,  but  the  specimens  pro- 
cured by  the  expedition  surpass  anything  which  has 
yet  been  obtained  from  savage  Africa.    In  particular, 


270  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

four  portrait-statues  of  early  chiefs,  one  dating  from 
the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century,  may  be 
mentioned." 

Mr.  Torday  was  told  that  the  founder  of  that  royal 
dynasty  was  a  white  man,  and  this  is  most  significant  as 
well  as  suggestive.  These  people,  who  were  but  a  short 
time  ago  the  most  civilised,  cultured,  and  artistic  people 
in  Central  Africa  (we  cannot  quite  subscribe  to  the 
wide  inclusiveness  of  Mr.  Torday 's  "any  other  African 
people"),  claim  that  some  hundreds  of  years  ago  —  it 
cannot  be  so  very  many  hundreds  if  there  are  only  one 
hundred  and  twenty-one  chiefs  recorded  who  constituted 
one  unbroken  dynasty  —  there  was  a  white  ancestor 
behind  them.  How  long  the  influence  of  that  white 
strain  was  felt  we  have  no  means  of  knowing,  but  the 
evidences  of  recent  decadence  are  unmistakable,  and  it 
raises  the  most  interesting  of  problems. 

Assuming  that  the  claim  made  by  and  for  these 
people  is  correct,  it  is  most  unfortunate  that  the 
phrase  "recorded  rulers"  is  not  more  clearly  defined; 
in  other  words,  we  should  like  to  know  precisely  how 
those  records  were  kept  and  who  has  been  competent 
to  read  them  now.  If,  in  the  sixteenth  century  of  our 
era  —  less  than  four  hundred  years  ago  —  a  (black?) 
king  known  now  as  Shamba  Bolongongo  ruled  a  kingdom 
in  Central  Africa  that  had  then  reached  the  zenith  of  its 
high  civilisation,  when  the  people  were  "united  among 
themselves,  respected  by  their  neighbours,  governed  by  a 
wise  king,  controlled  by  a  sort  of  parliament,  composed 
of  the  representatives  of  the  provinces,  the  arts,  and 
trades;  —  a  parliament  in  which  the  chief  magistrates, 


WHITE    man's    AFRICA  271 

the  chief  military  and  civil  officers,  women,  and  even 
the  slave  class,  were  represented,"  and  has  since  relapsed, 
notwithstanding  that  conditions  in  Bushongoland  are 
almost  immeasurably  superior  to  what  exist  in  other 
parts  of  "Black"  Africa,  what  a  problem  is  offered  to 
the  champions  of  Christian  civilisation! 

Is  it  possible  for  the  Negro  to  work  back  from  the 
absolutely  low  present  conditions  to  a  culture,  claimed 
to  be  high,  achieved  without  the  stimulus  of  foreign 
influence  hundreds  of  years  ago,  and  at  the  same  time 
mould  that  new  phase  of  old  culture  to  conform  to  stand- 
ards which  must  inevitably  rule  in  Africa  as,  other 
conditions  being  equal,  they  do  in  Europe?  Is  the  ten- 
dency to  degeneration  ineradicable?  It  is  not  unduly 
presumptuous  to  assert  that,  with  many  weaknesses 
and  deplorable  faults,  the  highest  phases  of  culture  and 
civihsation  are  now  found  in  those  people  who  belong 
to  the  lands  where  Christianity  is  the  generally  ac- 
cepted belief,  no  matter  what  the  past  may  teach  us  of 
physical,  mental,  and  spiritual  development. 

If  the  African  desires  to  take  a  place  alongside  the 
most  highly  cultured  white  people,  he  must  work  out 
his  own  salvation,  assimilate  that  esoteric  culture,  or 
yield  control  to  the  white  man.  We  take  no  special 
satisfaction  in  declaring  that  a  careful  study  of  the 
history  and  development  of  Africa,  from  north  to  south, 
from  east  to  west,  compels  us  to  admit  that  evidences 
point  relentlessly  to  a  time  in  the  not  far-off  Future 
when  it  is  to  be  in  every  essential  White  Man's  Africa. 
And  yet  we  cannot  believe  that  this  means  what  such 
writers  as  the  author  of  "The  White  Man's  Burden" 


272  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

suggests  so  selfishly,  or  that  it  implies  a  recurrence  of 
recent  conditions  in  Belgian  Kongo,  the  earlier  state 
of  affairs  in  South  Africa  under  Dutch  reign,  in  the 
brutalising  liquor  traffic  of  Portuguese  possessions  and 
elsewhere,  and  other  phases  of  miscalled  European 
civilisation. 

Now,  assuming  that  it  is  to  be  White  Man's  Africa, 
let  us  stop  for  a  moment  and,  putting  aside  as  much 
as  possible  all  personal,  ethical,  and  religious  prejudice, 
frankly  and  honestly  consider  what  that  means,  if  even 
present  conditions  are  maintained;  that  is  to  say,  assum- 
ing that  the  political  geography  of  Africa  has  now  become 
established  and  the  "scramble  for  Africa"  is  satisfied. 
Here  is  another  quotation  from  Mr.  Torday's  paper: 
"The  next  village  but  one  was  inhabited  by  Badjok,  and 
called  Mayila,  after  the  chief.  This  chief  had  come 
up  from  Angola  to  collect  rubber  and  shoot  elephants. 
Rubber  and  ivory  he  then  sells  to  the  Kasai  Company. 
As  soon  as  he  has  earned  some  money  he  returns  to 
Portuguese  territory,  where  natives  can  obtain  liquor, 
and  will  spend  his  fortime  in  drink." 

Taken  in  connection  with  what  was  said  in  an  earlier 
chapter,  a  part  of  which  was  devoted  to  a  consideration 
of  the  import  trade  at  Lourengo  Marques,  in  Portuguese 
East  Africa,  and  the  heavy  importation  of  low-grade 
European  wines,  mainly  for  the  use  of  natives  in 
British  possessions,  this  presents  for  thoughtful  con- 
sideration a  phase  of  what  may  be  one  feature  of  White 
Man's  Africa  that  is  not  conducive  to  very  high  culture. 
And  there  are  altogether  too  many  ports  and  European 
colonies  aU  over  Africa  where  the  opportunity  to  obtain 


Copvri%hi,  Underwood  &  i'nderuood,  .V.  }'. 

A  Typical  African  Jungle  Trail 


WHITE    man's    AFRICA  273 

European  liquors  is  too  easily  granted  and  too  willingly 
availed  of  by  the  weak  natives;  for  rarely,  if  ever,  is 
this  liquor  anything  but  the  "low-grade,"  wretched 
stuff  that  is  sold  cheap  and  is  highly  charged  with 
alcohol!  The  consensus  of  opinion  in  America  and 
Europe  is  strongly  opposed  to  cultivating  among  the 
natives  of  Africa,  and  of  all  parts  of  the  world  where 
the  present  state  of  civilisation  is  in  any  way  compar- 
able, a  taste  for  foreign  hquor,  and  there  have  been 
regulations  issued  by  some  of  the  European  governments 
now  exercising  protective  rights  over  great  areas  of 
that  continent  prohibiting  absolutely  the  sale  of  such 
liquor  to  natives;  but  without  earnest  and  honest 
co-operation  in  enforcing  such  rules  they  are  simply 
dead-letters. 

This  seems  to  be  another  case  wherein  An  Inter- 
national Police  is  very  much  wanted,*  and  unless  some- 
thing of  the  kind  is  provided  to  compel  all  to  follow 
the  wish  of  the  majority,  not  only  will  the  degenera- 
tion of  the  natives  rapidly  go  on  towards  physical  and 
mental  wreck  and  ultimate  extinction,  but  the  incentive 
to  broils  and  outbreaks,  which  must  cost  those  same 
"protectors"  the  lives  of  national  police  and  soldiers, 
as  well  as  much  money,  to  suppress,  will  be  greater 
directly  as  is  the  neglect  to  keep  the  poison  out  of 
natives'  hands. 

We  do  not  like  to  say  much  about  conditions  in  the 
Belgian  Kongo,  for  we  cannot  believe  that  the  Belgian 
Government  will  not  eventually  live  up  to  its  promises 
when  it  declared  it  would  improve  the  state  of  affairs 

*  Rear-Admiral  Goodrich,  op.  cit. 


274  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

in  its  African  protectorate.  This  was  the  declaration: 
"The  question  of  improving  the  lot  of  the  natives  is 
not  less  a  matter  of  solicitude  in  Belgium  than  it  is  in 
England.  It  is  one  of  the  loftiest  preoccupations  of  our 
country,  which  is  fully  sensible  of  the  importance  of  the 
civilising  mission  that  falls  to  its  lot  in  Africa."  In 
the  memorandum  of  April  25,  1908,  of  a  draft  for  a 
colonial  law  to  be  enforced  in  the  Belgian  Kongo,  it  was 
declared  that  the  principle  of  individual  Uberty  is  free 
from  any  further  restriction  whatsoever.  "The  Cabinet 
of  Brussels  intends  to  issue  and  give  effect  to  the  said 
measure  for  improving  the  lot  of  the  natives  as  soon  as 
ever  the  annexation  of  the  Kongo  and  the  Colonial  law 
have  been  voted  upon  afl&rmatively  by  Parliament.  It 
has  promised  the  Chamber  of  Representatives  to  do  so 
on  more  than  one  occasion ;  it  has  confirmed  these  prom- 
ises to  the  British  Government  in  writing,  and  to-day 
it  can  only  repeat  its  promise  with  the  same  earnestness 
as  before." 

The  Belgian  Government  substituted  itself  for  the 
personal  rule  of  King  Leopold  II  in  August,  1908,  and 
yet  now,  three  years  after,  conditions  in  the  Belgian 
Kongo  are  not  materially  improved,  if  we  consider  them 
as  a  whole.  In  19 10  the  Belgian  Budget  Committee  of 
the  Chamber  of  Representatives  passed  a  budget  which 
provided  that  out  of  a  total  sum  of  £1,589,812,  to  be 
drawn  from  the  Kongo,  native  labour  in  one  form  or 
another  was  to  supply  £839,900;  raw  rubber,  £535,000; 
ivory,  £18,000;  copal,  £11,200,  taxes  in  kind;  gold, 
£100,000,  from  mines  worked  by  compulsory  native 
labour  for  Government  account;  silver,  £80,000,  a  tax  in 


WHITE    MANS    AFRICA  275 

coin.  Besides  these  it  was  reckoned  that  rubber,  ivory, 
and  copal  to  the  value  of  £94,000  would  be  received  as 
profits  on  shares  in  concessionaire  companies,  owned  by 
King  Leopold  and  transferred  to  the  Government. 
"And  this  huge  amount  is  to  be  wrung,  four-fifths  of  it 
admittedly — the  whole  of  it  probably — by  compulsion, 
out  of  a  miserable  population,  exhausted,  partially 
decimated,  and  racked  (in  many  regions)  by  disease 
following  seventeen  years  of  infamous  misrule."* 

Admitting,  but  (as  Scotch  juries  sometimes  declare) 
it  is  "not  proven,"  that  two  years  have  brought  some 
amelioration  of  conditions  for  the  natives  in  the  Belgian 
Kongo,  the  fact  remains  that  for  seventeen  long  years 
those  miserable,  unfortunate  people,  innocent  of  all 
crime  deserving  punishment,  were  subjected  to  a  policy 
of  organised  pillage  and  to  a  form  of  slavery  necessarily 
accompanied  by  hideous  outrages,  since  the  medium 
whereby  it  has  been  enforced  consisted  of  a  savage  and 
often  uncontrolled  soldiery,  feeding  upon  the  country, 
frequently  recruited  by  annual  raids  and  so  poorly  paid 
that  unrestricted  license  to  gratify  every  lust  has  been  the 
main  incentive  to  loyalty.  All  this  must  make  the  most 
ignorant  negro  contemplate  with  more  than  anxiety  the 
time  when  his  country  shall  be  in  truth  the  White  Man's 
Africa. 

We  turn  abruptly  and  without  apology  to  the  contem- 
plation in  this  chapter  of  another  topic,  and  one  which 
is  as  attractive  as  the  last  was,  in  some  of  its  aspects, 

*  "The  Future  of  the  Congo,"  E.  D.  Morel,  on  behalf  of  the  Congo 
Association,  to  Lord  Grey,  His  Britannic  Majesty's  Principal  Secretary 
of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs,  November,  1909. 


276  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

repulsive  in  its  recent  history  and  ominous  for  the  future. 
That  is  the  African  Islands.  It  is  striking  that  both 
of  the  great  continent  peninsulas  which  project  down 
towards  the  south  from  the  broader  northern  parts  of 
the  two  hemispheres  should  have  so  few  islands  along 
their  coasts.  At  hardly  any  place  is  there  anything 
approximating  an  archipelago  or  even  a  well-defined 
fringe  or  group  of  islands;  and  yet  there  are  several 
islands  that  geographically  are  considered  as  belonging 
to  Africa,  and  several  of  them  have  a  history  which  is 
very  interesting,  with  here  and  there  a  touch  of  romance 
that  is  attractive;  as,  for  example,  in  the  case  of  the 
Madeiras. 

Legend  tells  us  that  these  were  first  discovered  by  an 
Englishman,  but  rediscovered  by  the  Portuguese,  and 
the  romance  is  connected  with  one  Robert  Machin, 
who  loved  and  was  beloved  by  a  lady  whose  father 
refused  to  accept  Machin  as  a  suitor  because  of  his 
humble  birth  and  poverty.  To  get  Miss  Aim  D'Arfet 
away  from  her  lover,  the  father  sent  her  to  a  castle  near 
the  coast  of  Kent  and  for  a  time  kept  her  in  close  con- 
finement. But  the  lady,  acting  strictly  the  part  she 
and  Robert  had  planned,  affected  to  be  very  cheerful 
and  happy  in  her  banishment.  So  well  did  she  play  her 
part  that  both  father  and  duenna  were  deceived,  and 
after  a  time  Ann  was  permitted  to  leave  the  castle  un- 
attended to  walk  along  the  cliff  over  what  was  supposed 
to  be  a  deserted  coast;  and  such  it  had  been  until,  in 
response  to  a  prearranged  signal,  Robert  approached  in 
a  small  vessel.  Ann  was  taken  on  board,  all  sail  was 
set,  and  the  course  laid  for  France;   but  suddenly  a 


WHITE    man's    AFRICA  277 

fierce  gale  from  the  north  sprang  up  and  the  sloop  was 
driven  out  to  sea,  southward,  for  fourteen  days.  Then 
they  reached  an  island,  and  getting  into  the  skiff  landed 
and  were  the  first  Europeans  to  step  upon  one  of  the 
Madeira  Islands. 

But  another  gale  drove  away  the  sloop,  leaving  the 
few  on  the  island.  The  exposure,  hunger,  and  anxiety 
were  too  much  for  the  lady,  who  died,  and  five  days 
later  Machin,  with  his  few  comrades,  took  passage  in 
something  they  seem  to  have  been  able  to  build.  They 
shaped  their  course  for  the  mainland,  but  misfortune 
still  accompanied  them  and  they  reached  the  coast  of 
Morocco,  only  to  be  captured  by  Moors  and  sold  as 
slaves.  This  is  the  substance  of  the  tale  as  given  by  a 
Portuguese  writer;  but  other  accounts,  absolutely  re- 
gardless of  dates  and  chronology,  continue  the  narra- 
tive by  saying  that  Machin  was  ransomed  by  a  Spaniard 
of  Seville,  one  Juan  de  Morales,  and  entered  his  service 
as  a  naval  oflScer.  Morales  transferred  his  allegiance 
to  Portugal,  under  Prince  Henry  the  Navigator,  redis- 
covered the  island  and  visited  Ann's  grave;  there  were 
then  no  inhabitants.  The  group  of  islands  has  been 
under  different  flags,  the  British  for  a  time,  but  is  now 
a  possession  of  the  historically  original  discoverers,  and 
its  fame  as  a  health  resort  is  its  greatest  asset. 

There  are  really  but  two  islands  that  are  large  enough 
to  support  human  life,  and  these  are  so  salubrious  in 
every  way  that,  despite  the  considerable  emigration  to 
other  parts  of  the  world,  they  are  declared  to  be  over- 
crowded. These  people  are  of  most  mixed  descent,  Por- 
tuguese and  a  good  deal  of  Moorish  and  Negro  blood 


278  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

in  the  lower  classes;  their  history  has  been  considered 
sufficiently  important  to  induce  ethnologists  to  make 
careful  research.  Probably  the  name,  Madeira,  is  asso- 
ciated in  most  people's  mind  with  the  wine  that  was 
justly  famous  for  so  many  generations.  The  destruction 
wrought  by  phylloxera  has  not  yet  been  entirely  over- 
come, and  conditions  are  now  such  that  probably  even 
"Old  Madeira"  will  never  again  be  so  seductive  as  it 
was  of  yore.  It  is  doubtful  if  the  myth  that  the  islands 
were  known  to  the  Phoenicians  has  any  reasonable  foun- 
dation in  fact. 

The  Canary,  or  Fortunate,  Islands.  There  are  seven 
inhabited  islands;  the  largest,  Teneriffe,  is  only  eight 
hundred  and  seventy-seven  square  miles  in  area  and 
the  smallest,  Hierro  (or  Ferro),  but  eighty-two  square 
miles.  Besides  these  inhabited  islands  there  are  a  num- 
ber of  islets,  most  of  them  without  residents.  Inasmuch 
as  Lanzarote,  the  most  easterly  of  the  group,  is  only 
some  fifty  miles  from  the  African  coast,  it  is  quite  rea- 
sonable to  admit  that  these  islands  were  known  to  the 
earliest  Phoenician  navigators  who  ventured  beyond  the 
Pillars  of  Hercules.  But  their  history  dates  from  the 
year  141 7  only,  when  they  were  discovered  by  one  Jean 
de  Bethencourt,  a  Frenchman,  but  then  in  the  service 
of  Castile.  During  the  war  between  Spain  (Ferdinand 
of  Castile)  and  Portugal  (Alfonso  V)  each  country  laid 
claim  to  the  possessions  of  the  other,  but  the  Peace 
of  Alcobago,  in  1479,  confirmed  Spain's  right  to  the 
Canaries,  and  they  have  ever  since  belonged  to  her. 
L)dng  right  in  the  track  of  all  vessels  bound  down  the 
coast  of  Africa,  these  islands  will  always  be  an  important 


WHITE    man's    AFRICA  279 

centre  for  navigators,  and  most  of  the  submarine  tele- 
graph cables  between  Europe  and  the  West  Coast  are 
landed  here,  either  for  relay  or  as  a  matter  of  convenience. 
The  Hakluyt  Society  has  recently  set  its  mark  of 
approval  upon  the  archaeology  of  these  islands  by  re- 
printing, with  English  translation,  the  earliest  account 
of  the  most  ancient  inhabitants,  the  Guanches,  of  whose 
origin  nothing  positive  is  known.  That  they  came  from 
the  neighbouring  mainland  is  too  simple  a  statement  to 
satisfy  ethnologists;  but  if  this  is  the  fact,  the  entire 
absence  of  Mahommedan  custom  and  ritual,  when  the 
islands  were  first  visited  by  modern  Europeans,  indicates 
that  the  Guanche  emigration  took  place  in  the  very 
early  years  of  Hejira,  and  probably  before  622  a.d.  The 
custom  of  embalming  the  dead  seems  to  form  a  connect- 
ing link  between  these  Guanches  and  the  Egyptians; 
but  this  is  merely  sportive  ethnology.  The  great  Canaria 
dogs,  from  which  the  name  of  the  islands  is  alleged  to 
have  been  derived,  have  long  since  disappeared.  The 
Peak  of  Teneriffe,  Pico  de  Teyde,  which  rises  almost 
sheer  from  the  sea  to  a  height  of  twelve  thousand  two 
hundred  feet,  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  mountains 
in  the  world,  and  every  person  who  has  looked  almost 
straight  up  to  its  summit  from  the  deck  of  a  passing 
steamer  is  impressed  by  its  appearance  and  inevitably 
possessed  with  the  horrible  thought  of  what  would 
happen  should  the  almost  perpendicular  mass  topple 
over.  But  visitors  who  land  and  make  the  ascent  of 
the  mountain  are  rewarded  by  cloud  effects  that  are 
almost  imique  and  by  a  sea  view  (when  they  are 
so  fortunate  as  to  catch  a  clear  day)  which  is  inde- 


28o  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

scribable.  The  climate  of  the  Canaries  is  not  such  as  to 
tempt  visitors  to  make  a  lengthy  sojourn.  The  vines 
on  these  islands,  too,  have  suffered  from  the  grape  disease 
almost  as  much  as  those  of  Madeira. 

The  Cape  Verd  Islands  are  but  a  very  short  distance, 
comparatively,  from  the  extreme  western  point  of  Africa, 
and  since  their  discovery  in  1441  have  been  a  Portu- 
guese colony.  They  are  unusually  well  administered. 
The  Roman  Catholic  clergy  give  considerable  attention 
to  the  education  of  the  poorer  children,  but  those  of  the 
wealthier  classes  are  all  sent  to  Lisbon  for  their  edu- 
cation. The  climate  is  not  good;  the  Earmattan, 
mentioned  in  Chapter  X,  Western  Africa,  blows  from 
the  continent  at  times  and  it  is  very  trying.  Cattle 
raising  is  the  principal  industry.  The  flora  is  remark- 
able, but  doubtless  a  good  many  plants  which  now  seem 
to  grow  wild  were  originally  exotics  brought  from  the 
mainland. 

St.  Helena,  discovered  and  settled  by  the  Portuguese 
in  1501,  on  the  festival  of  the  Empress  Helena,  mother 
of  Emperor  Constantine,  was  later  deserted  by  the 
discoverers  and  lay  waste  and  almost  uninhabited  until 
the  Dutch  found  it  to  be  a  convenient  stopping-place 
for  their  ships  going  to  and  returning  from  the  Far  East. 
Then  the  Dutch  East  India  Company  took  possession 
and  resettled  the  island,  but  gave  it  up  for  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope.  Later  the  English  East  India  Company 
occupied  it  and  fought  with  the  Dutch  for  its  possession, 
eventually  maintaining  their  supremacy.  St.  Helena  is 
so  absolutely  associated  in  our  minds  with  Napoleon  I, 
and  therefore  is  so  well  known  to  most  readers,  that 


WHITE    man's    AFRICA  281 

further  comment  here  seems  superfluous.  But  those 
who  wish  to  read  a  full  description  of  the  island  and  its 
history  are  referred  to  the  extensive  library  on  these 
subjects. 

Ascension  and  St.  Matthew  can  hardly  detain  us  long. 
They  are  really  nothing  more  than  peaks  of  a  great 
submarine  range  of  mountains  which  mark  the  division 
between  the  northern  and  southern  basins  of  the  Atlantic. 
Ascension  has  been  brought  to  some  use  as  a  "market 
garden,"  and  among  old-time  navigators  it  was  called 
"The  Post  Office,"  because  ships  passing,  outward  bound, 
would  sometimes  leave  letters  in  a  crevice  of  the  rocks, 
to  be  passed  on  by  the  next  comers  going  in  the  right 
direction.  Besides  these,  there  are  a  few  other  small 
islands  in  the  Atlantic  Ocean  that  geographically  pertain 
to  Africa,  but  not  any  of  them  have  sufficient  historic 
or  popular  interest  to  call  for  mention. 

After  rounding  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and  entering 
the  Indian  Ocean,  we  presently  come  to  what  may  be 
called  the  only  "group"  of  African  islands  attaining 
proportions  of  real  magnitude:  Madagascar,  Reunion 
(Bourbon),  Mauritius  (He  de  France),  and  northeast 
of  the  first-named  the  islets  that  culminate  in  the  Sey- 
chelles, and  ofif  Cape  Guardafui,  the  extreme  eastern 
point  of  Africa,  in  Italian  Somaliland,  the  island  of 
Sokotra. 

Madagascar  is  one  of  the  largest  islands  in  the  world. 
The  French  claim  to  have  been  the  first  to  discover  the 
island,  but  this  is  very  naturally  disputed  by  the  Por- 
tuguese, whose  date,  1506,  is  now  generally  accepted. 
We  know  that  Arab  merchants  were  deahng  with  the 


282  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

inhabitants  over  a  thousand  years  ago.  While  the 
geology  of  Madagascar  has  been  but  imperfectly  investi- 
gated, and  the  fauna  and  flora  not  yet  exhaustively 
studied,  we  are  certain  that  a  full  narrative  of  its  known 
plant  hfe  would  more  than  fill  a  volume  the  size  of  this, 
and  there  are  yet,  in  all  probabiHty,  imidentified  and 
unnamed  species,  awaiting  the  earnest  student;  for  in  a 
strange  way  the  flora  of  Asia  and  Africa  are  blended 
here.  The  conformation  of  the  island,  having  a  high 
interior  plateau,  is  naturally  the  cause  of  great  variety 
in  chmate;  the  highlands  being  in  every  way  suited 
to  Europeans. 

"While  the  people  are  not  civilised  in  the  European 
sense,  they  are  not  a  savage  race,  and  some  of  the  tribes 
are  hardly  to  be  classed  among  barbarous  peoples. 
They  have  never,  for  instance,  fallen  into  the  cannibal 
practices  of  many  allied  races  in  Polynesia,  and  the 
tribal  instincts  are  strong  among  all  sections  of  the 
population.  They  are  law-obeying  and  loyal,  living  in 
settled  communities,  in  villages  which  are  often  fortified 
with  considerable  skill,  with  a  government  of  chiefs  and 
elders,  a  development  of  a  primitive  patriarchal  sys- 
tem." Yet,  at  the  same  time,  these  people  are  very 
immoral  and  untruthful,  disregardful  of  human  life,  and 
cruel  in  war.  This  native  society  offers  a  field  for  most 
interesting  ethnological  research.  Madagascar  is  now 
an  important  French  colony. 

Reunion,  formerly  Isle  de  Bourbon,  was  one  of  France's 
most  important  overseas  possessions,  but  may  be  said 
to  have  yielded  precedence  to  the  protectorates  of 
Central  Africa  and  the  Far  Eastern  colonies  in  Indo- 


WHITE    man's    AFRICA  283 

China.  The  geological  connection,  through  Mauritius 
and  curving  round  through  the  Seychelles,  with  Mada- 
gascar, is  most  interesting.  The  active  volcano,  Piton 
des  Neiges  (10,069  feet),  presents  a  very  curious  freak  of 
nature  in  its  conformation.  "The  traveller  approaching 
the  present  craters  from  the  west  has  consequently 
to  descend  upwards  of  one  thousand  feet  by  two  abrupt 
stages  (into  a  bowl)  before  he  begins  the  ascent  of  the 
cones." 

The  moimtainous  character  of  Mauritius  makes  it 
a  most  picturesque  spot  and  its  scenery  is  varied  and 
beautiful.  The  highest  peak,  Montague  de  la  Riviere 
Noire,  is  twenty-seven  hundred  and  eleven  feet  in  alti- 
tude. The  climate  is  agreeable  during  their  winter, 
May  to  November,  but  oppressively  hot  in  summer, 
December  to  April,  when  there  are  frequent  hurricanes, 
the  typhoons  of  farther  eastern  seas.  Although  Mauritius 
is  now  a  British  crown  colony,  having  been  captured  in 
1810  and  confirmed  to  Great  Britain  upon  the  restora- 
tion of  peace  in  18 14,  it  has  largely  retained  the  old 
French  laws  and  rules  of  legal  procedure.  It  is  an 
attractive  place  in  many  ways,  and  were  it  on  one  of 
the  comfortable  lanes  of  travel,  without  the  necessity 
of  crossing  the  equator  to  reach  it,  it  would  undoubt- 
edly be  included  in  the  itinerary  of  many  tourists.  The 
dependencies  of  Mauritius  are  the  Seychelles  group,  the 
islands  of  Rodriguez  and  Diego  Garcia,  the  Chagos 
group,  and  seventy  other  smaller  islands  scattered 
widely  through  the  Indian  Ocean.  Sugar,  as  is  well 
known,  is  the  principal  product  of  both  Reunion  and 
Mauritius. 


284  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

The  Seychelles  belong  to  Great  Britain  and  are 
practically  the  only  archipelago  that  can  be  said  to  be 
in  any  way  connected  with  Africa.  There  are  eighty 
small  islands,  some  of  them  nothing  more  than  rocks,  and 
they  are  usually  surrounded  by  coral  reefs.  The  valleys 
and  hill  slopes  are  fertile  and  covered  with  most  luxu- 
riant vegetation.  The  sea-breeze  tempers  the  heat,  so 
that  the  archipelago  is  by  no  means  uninhabitable  for 
white  people,  were  there  any  inducement  to  live  there; 
but  since  manioc  is  the  chief  product  and  turtle  flesh 
figures  largely  in  the  exports,  it  may  be  imagined  that 
there  is  not  much  to  attract  Europeans.  Without  pre- 
tending to  have  enumerated  all  the  African  islands,  we 
shall  close  this  sketch  with  a  few  words  about  Sokotra, 
a  distant  glimpse  of  which  is  sometimes  had  from  the 
deck  of  steamers  passing  to  and  fro  between  the  Red 
Sea  and  Aden,  Southern  Arabia;  and  it  is  the  first 
of  Africa  which  the  American  globe-trotter,  travelling 
westward  round  the  world,  can  possibly  see.  When  it 
is  possible  to  get  a  near  view  the  scenery  is  found  to  be 
very  striking,  with  bare  rocky  heights  and  fertile  valleys. 
There  is  little  cultivation,  the  inhabitants  depending 
almost  entirely  upon  their  flocks  of  sheep  and  goats, 
or  on  dates,  either  grown  at  home  or  imported.  The 
people  have  a  good  reputation  for  hospitality  and  de- 
portment. In  1886  the  island  was  formally  ceded  to  Great 
Britain.  The  flora  and  fauna  are  pecuHar;  Sokotran 
aloes  is  esteemed  the  best  in  the  world.  In  former  times 
the  ambergris  obtained  here  was  justly  famous. 


CHAPTER   XVII 
"CAPE  TO  CAIRO" 

THERE  is  always  something  distinctly  attractive 
about  an  effective  alliteration.  Doubtless  it  is 
because  there  survives  in  each  one  of  us  a  trace,  if  nothing 
more,  of  the  fondness  of  our  remote  British  ancestors 
for  this  primitive  form  of  English  poetry;  and  the 
phrase  "Cape  to  Cairo  Railway"  possesses  at  least 
two,  if  not  more,  attractions  for  both  eye  and  ear.  First, 
there  is  the  pleasant  alliteration  in  the  words  themselves; 
and  second,  it  compels  our  admiration  for  the  stupendous 
physical  and  professional  undertaking  which  the  con- 
struction of  the  links  in  that  long  line  and  the  tying 
together  of  those  parts  into  a  complete  system  indicate. 
Yet,  after  all,  we  had  rapidly  come  to  expect  that  in 
Africa  would  be  rounded  out  and  completed  the  great 
task  of  providing,  with  the  most  modem  practical  means 
at  our  command,  for  the  rapid  and,  all  things  duly  con- 
sidered, regular  traversing  of  the  second  in  size  of  the 
continents,  from  its  southern  extremity,  at  comparatively 
recent  Cape  Town,  to  its  northern  limit  at  Alexandria, 
making  of  Cairo  but  an  important  "way  station." 
This  latter  city,  which  is  relatively  new  when  we  think 
in  terms  of  Egyptian  chronology,  for  Alexandria  was 
already  twelve  hundred  years  old  when  the  "new"  city 
of  Cairo  was  begun,  will  hardly  satisfy  the  demands  of 

285 


286  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

present-day  travellers  who  are  altogether  too  parsimo- 
nious of  time  and  too  sybaritic  about  personal  comfort 
to  consent  to  anything  but  direct  connection  between 
railway  train  and  steamer  at  the  ship's  side.  In  all 
probability,  then,  Alexandria  will  be  the  northern  ter- 
minus of  the  great  north  and  south  African  trunk  line, 
and  the  link  between  Cairo  and  Alexandria  has  been  in 
operation  for  many  years. 

The  completion  of  the  first  great  transcontinental 
railway  in  the  United  States,  the  Union  and  Central 
Pacific,  actually  preceded  the  fastening  together  of  the 
links  of  independent  and  international  lines  in  Europe 
which  permitted  of  the  precise  use  of  the  term  "trans- 
continental" as  applied  to  trains  on  that  continent. 
Still,  it  was  not  long  after  1869,  in  which  year,  it  will 
be  remembered,  through  service  from  the  Atlantic 
to  the  Pacific  was  given  in  the  United  States,  until  it 
became  possible  to  go  by  train  from  any  one  of  several 
European  ports  on  the  Atlantic  coast  to  Constantinople 
in  the  southeast,  where  one  looks  across  the  narrow 
Bosphorus  right  into  Asia,  or  to  Cheliabinsk,  on  the 
frontier  between  Russia  in  Europe  and  Siberia;  and 
then  transcontinental  railways  in  Europe  were  an 
accomplished  fact. 

To  our  American  mind  that  fact  as  accomplished, 
however,  may  not  be  entirely  satisfactory;  since,  with 
the  exception  of  the  Oriental  express  trains  which  go 
all  the  way  from  Paris  to  Constantinople  without  the 
necessity  of  passengers  changing  cars,  the  journey  can- 
not be  performed  without  break  by  the  ordinary  traveller, 
whose  purse  compels  consideration  of  expense  or  whose 


(( 


CAPE    TO    CAIRO"  287 


ideas  of  the  proper  use  of  money  forbids  yielding  to  the 
luxury  and  extravagance  (both  actual  and  incidental) 
of  the  Oriental  trains  de  luxe;  because  not  only  is  the 
price  of  the  ticket  very  high,  but  the  expenses  for  sleep- 
ing-car accommodation,  meals,  and  the  innumerable 
"tips"  run  away  with  a  goodly  sum  of  money. 

If  the  traveller  intends  to  cross  Europe  and  Asia  by 
the  trans-Siberian  line,  a  change  at  the  Russian  frontier 
—  to  say  nothing  of  others  when  once  within  Russian 
territory  —  is  a  necessity  that  is  more  radical  than  that 
which  we  make  at  either  Chicago  or  St.  Louis.  The 
extreme  caution  displayed  by  the  Russian  Government 
to  prevent  (if  possible)  all  improper  crossing  of  the 
frontier  either  by  passenger  or  luggage  is  one  of  the  rea- 
sons, probably  the  principal  one,  for  the  change  of  gauge 
and  the  consequent  inconvenience  to  which  travellers  are 
subjected.  Our  change  at  any  one  of  the  several  points 
where  connection  is  made  between  Atlantic  and  Pacific 
systems  is  not  imperatively  necessary,  and  many  trains, 
or  at  any  rate  a  large  number  of  private  cars,  have  been 
taken  through  from  coast  to  coast  without  the  occupants 
making  any  change  at  all.  For  many  years  the  through 
trains  of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railway,  between  Mon- 
treal and  Vancouver  without  change  for  passengers  of 
all  classes,  have  daily  made  what  is  virtually  a  complete 
transcontinental  journey. 

Then,  with  the  completion  of  the  trans-Siberian  line, 
came  the  railway's  conquest  of  the  greatest  of  all  the 
continents,  Asia.  Now  we  are  looking  for  the  time,  in 
what  is  confidently  expressed  as  the  "near  future," 
when  the  suppression  of  international  jealousies  about 


288  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

"spheres  of  influence,"  concessions,  supplying  materials, 
rights  of  construction,  equipment,  maintenance,  and 
operation  shall  permit  of  the  building  of  needed  divi- 
sions and  the  tying  together  of  the  existing  links  of  a 
system  of  railways  across  Turkey  in  Asia,  Persia,  one 
or  the  other  of  the  small  buffer  states,  Baluchistan  or 
Afghanistan,  until  connection  is  made  with  the  British- 
Indian  system  of  railways,  and  then  across  Farther 
India,  Burma,  and  Siam,  into  French  Indo-China,  on  to 
China  itself,  so  that  Canton  and  Hongkong  shall  be 
accessible  from  Europe  by  rail  across  the  southern 
part  of  Asia.  This  is  already  more  than  a  mere  dream 
of  enthusiastic  engineers;  and  it  may  very  well  be  that 
there  are  children  hving  to-day  who,  soon  after  they 
shall  have  attained  majority  in  age,  will  enter  a  com- 
partment carriage  at,  let  us  say,  Calais  or  Cherbourg 
or  Havre  and  leave  it  ten  days  or  a  fortnight  later  at 
Kowloon,  opposite  Hongkong! 

Already  the  thought  of  railways  that  shall  permit  of 
a  virtually  continuous  journey  by  train  from  far  north 
in  Canada,  across  the  United  States,  down  through 
Mexico  and  the  Central  American  States,  to  the  south- 
ern end  of  Chili,  along  the  western  slope  of  the  Andes, 
is  something  so  near  accomplishment  as  to  excite  but 
Kttle  of  the  amazement  which,  a  score  or  two  of  years 
ago,  would  have  been  caused  by  the  mere  suggestion 
of  such  an  audacious  enterprise.  The  contemplation 
of  this  possibility  —  nay,  we  venture  to  say  reasonable 
probability  —  carries  with  it  almost  of  necessity,  cer- 
tainly as  a  perfectly  logical  consequence,  the  thought 
of  traversing  all  the  South  American  countries  with 


tt 


CAPE    TO    CAIRO**  289 


intercommunicating  railways,  which  shall  be  connected 
at  the  Isthmus  of  Panama  with  the  Central  American 
trunk  line,  and  by  this  with  the  whole  of  the  American 
and  Canadian  systems.  While,  at  the  other  end  of  this 
tremendous  system,  there  appears  the  probable  exten- 
sion of  railways  through  the  Dominion  of  Canada  to 
Alaska,  and  by  ferry  across  Behring  Straits  until  connec- 
tion is  made  on  the  Kamschatkan  coast  with  Russian 
railways  extended  from  the  Siberian  trunk  line  into  the 
extreme  eastern  part  of  Russian  territory. 

It  may  not  be  generally  known  that  this  project  — 
even  if  it  does  seem  almost  a  mad  one  —  was  seriously 
considered  within  the  past  ten  years;  that  the  engineer- 
ing problems,  stupendous  as  they  appear  to  the  unini- 
tiated layman,  were  confidently  discounted  by  expert 
engineers  and  the  capital  for  the  whole  tremendous 
enterprise  secured.  It  was  shelved  by  the  French  pro- 
moters merely  because  it  was  decided  to  be  a  little 
premature  and  of  some  difficulty  in  securing  American, 
British,  and  Russian  concessions  and  co-operation. 
But  it  may  come  up  again  in  the  course  of  a  short 
time  and  be  carried  to  engineering  and  economic  suc- 
cess. Then  shall  we  be  able  to  speak  of  quite  a  new 
phase  of  "circling  the  globe!"  The  only  seemingly 
insuperable  obstacle  to  a  through  train  from  New  York, 
via  all  the  way  round  the  globe,  back  to  New  York, 
will  remain  in  the  Northern  Atlantic.  This  little  diver- 
gence into  the  realm  of  fancy,  as  we  think  of  these 
possible  continental  and  world-inclusive  railway  systems, 
leads  to  a  bit  of  trifling  pleasantry  —  how  fearfully 
magnified  and  complicated  will  become  the  duties  of 


290  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

the  "lost-car  tracer!"    Truly,  we  must  not  yet  say 
that  the  age  of  miracles  has  passed. 

But  not  one  of  the  transcontinental  lines  which  have 
already  become  accomplished  facts  presented  such  a 
combination  of  difficulties  as  those  which  faced  the 
late  Cecil  Rhodes  when  he  first  moved  in  the  matter  of 
the  Cape  to  Cairo  Railway.  Not  only  were  the  physical 
obstacles  hard  to  overcome,  although  these  may  be 
matched  by  similar  conditions  elsewhere,  but  there  were 
problems  in  politics,  sociology,  and  meteorology  to  be 
solved.  The  plan  for  traversing  the  great  continent 
from  south  to  north  is  no  longer  something  which  sug- 
gests the  use  of  the  word  "miracle."  It  is  something 
exceedingly  practical,  even  if  there  yet  stand  in  the 
way  of  its  completion  difficulties  which  would  have 
baffled  constructive  and  operating  engineers  but  a  very 
few  years  ago.  In  building  the  numerous  sections  which 
must  be  welded  together,  the  several  nations  exercising 
rights  that  accrue  from  possession  and  "spheres  of 
influence"  are  displaying  a  willingness  to  co-operate 
which  augurs  well.  If  the  route  that  Rhodes  approved 
of  is  followed,  the  actual  financial  burden  in  constructing 
the  main  trunk  line  will  fall  upon  but  two  European 
countries.  Great  Britain  and  Germany;  because  the 
route  crosses  the  South  Africa  Union,  Rhodesia,  skirts 
the  extreme  western  part  of  German  East  Africa,  re- 
enters British  territory  at  Uganda  in  the  British  East 
African  State,  and  on  leaving  that  enters  the  valley 
of  the  White  Nile  and  continues  within  the  sphere  of 
British  influence  until  it  meets  the  "  Nile  Valley  Railway  " 
at  Khartum. 


Copyrifkl,  Underwood  j-  Underwood.  .V.  I'. 

Victoria  Falls,  Zambesi  River 


"cape    TO    CAIRO"  291 

It  is  more  than  interesting,  it  is  positively  pathetic 
at  times,  to  note  how  soon  after  leaving  Cape  Town 
the  railway  enters  the  lands  which  were  traversed  by 
the  great  Livingstone.  Through  Cape  Colony,  Orange 
River  Colony,  into  the  Transvaal,  the  two  lines  are 
almost  parallel.  In  Matabeleland  the  railway  diverges 
to  the  eastward  from  Livingstone's  trail,  but  crosses 
it  again  some  distance  below  the  Victoria  Falls  of  the 
Zambesi  River.  Livingstone,  as  we  know,  went  down 
the  valley  of  the  Zambesi  to  its  mouth.  Afterwards  he 
struck  back  towards  the  north  to  Lake  Nyasa  and 
diverged  to  the  northwestward  through  what  is  now 
Rhodesia.  It  is  not  pretended  that  this  is  an  accurate 
chronological  account  of  Livingstone's  explorations;  it 
is  merely  a  rough  statement  of  some  of  his  work  which 
connects  with  it  the  task  now  in  hand.  In  the  northern 
part  of  this  Rhodesia  territory  the  proposed  Cape  to 
Cairo  Railway  again  crosses  Livingstone's  trail,  south 
of  Lake  Tanganyika;  it  then  inclines  a  Uttle  towards  the 
east  at  Ujiji,  on  the  east  shore  of  the  lake  and  about 
the  middle  thereof,  and  rounds  the  northwest  comer 
of  Lake  Victoria  Nyanza.  Here  it  goes  towards  the 
east  of  north  through  the  Koromori  Mountains  and 
Juba  Hills  in  order  to  get  down  gradually  to  the  White 
Nile  Valley. 

In  tracing  thus  roughly  the  proposed  route  of  the 
railway,  it  is  not  alone  Livingstone  who  is  constantly 
brought  to  mind,  but  the  journeys  of  other  famous 
African  explorers  are  recalled:  Serpa  Pinto,  who  crossed 
the  lower  end  of  Africa  in  1877-79;  Glave,  who  in 
1893-95  went  from  the  mouth  of  the  Zambesi  around 


292  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Lake  Nyasa  along  the  Loangwa  River  to  Chitambo's 
(where  Livingstone  died  in  1873)  ^^^^.r  Lake  Bangweolo, 
and  eventually  down  the  Kongo  to  its  mouth  on  the 
west  coast.  Further  on,  after  leaving  Rhodesia,  in 
German  East  Africa,  the  line  comes  in  touch  with 
Stanley,  Speke  and  Grant,  and  Baker.  All  of  these 
are  names  with  which  to  conjure  when  we  are  dealing 
with  the  great  Dark  Continent,  and  to  whose  records 
the  surveyors  and  constructing  engineers  of  the  Cape 
to  Cairo  Railway  are  admittedly  greatly  indebted  for 
the  success  of  what  they  have  done,  and  to  whom 
they  must  continue  to  be  beholden.  If  there  were  any 
doubt  in  the  mind  of  readers  as  to  the  Herculean  nature 
of  the  task  which  has  been  undertaken  by  those  civil 
engineers,  it  will  be  instantly  dispelled  by  reading  the 
records  of  those  pioneers  and  explorers  and  the  accounts 
that  all  of  them  give  of  trackless  tropical  forests  which 
are  not  yet  so  opened  as  shall  materially  reduce  the 
labour  of  surveying  and  then  building  a  railway. 

Since  the  word  "Cape"  is  given  precedence  in  the  title 
bestowed  on  this  proposed  railway,  which  is  rapidly 
progressing  towards  the  point  of  accomplishment,  it 
seems  quite  proper  to  begin  at  Cape  Town  in  hastily 
considering  the  line  and  its  probable  bearing  upon  the 
permanent  development  of  the  whole  continent.  This 
last  expression  is  chosen  deliberately  because  it  is  be- 
lieved that  when  the  direct  connections  with  other  rail- 
ways that  shall  act  as  feeders  and  the  transverse  lines 
with  which  it  will  exchange  business  are  considered  later, 
it  must  be  made  manifest  that  the  Cape  to  Cairo  Railway 
is  to  exert  a  tremendous  influence  for  good  on  the  whole 


''cape    to    CAIRO**  293 

of  Africa.  Already  the  line  has  been  extended  so  far 
beyond  Bulawayo,  in  Matabeleland  of  British  South 
Africa,  that  passengers  can  readily  go  to  any  part  of 
Rhodesia,  and  the  construction  reaches  so  near  the 
southern  end  of  Lake  Tanganyika  that  already  one-third 
of  the  lower  part  is  now  operated.  With  the  Nile  Valley 
Railway  included,  fully  two-thirds  of  the  Cape  to  Cairo 
is  completed.  While  the  construction  work  on  this  com- 
pleted southern  one-third  has  not  been  an  easy  matter  at 
aU,  the  difficulties  are  not  to  be  compared  with  those 
which  face  the  constructors  through  the  central  one-third. 
Some  idea  of  what  must  be  undertaken  by  the  engi- 
neers who  are  to  build  a  railway  along  the  eastern  shore 
of  Lake  Tanganyika,  and  —  better  yet  for  the  general 
reader  —  some  hint  as  to  the  scenery  which  is  to  greet 
the  traveller,  may  be  had  from  a  brief  description  of  this 
lake.  It  is  the  longest  known  body  of  fresh  water  in  the 
world,  being  four  hundred  and  twenty  miles  long,  or 
one  hundred  miles  longer  than  our  own  Lake  Michigan 
(three  hundred  and  twenty  miles),  and  seventy  miles 
longer  than  Lake  Superior;  but  inasmuch  as  its  breadth 
ranges  only  from  ten  to  fifty  miles,  its  area,  twelve 
thousand  six  hundred  and  fifty  square  miles,  is  much 
less  than  those  American  lakes.  Its  altitude  may  be 
taken  as  about  twenty-seven  hundred  feet  above  sea 
level,  and  while  its  depth  has  not  yet  been  actually 
determined,  it  is  said  (Hore)  that  a  one  hundred  and 
sixty-eight  fathom  line  often  failed  to  reach  the  bottom. 
It  is,  indeed,  an  enormous  crevasse,  bordered  on  all  sides 
by  hills  and  mountains,  some  of  which  rise  from  five 
to  ten  thousand  feet  above  its  surface. 


294  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

Burton,  quoted  in  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  from 
which  authority  some  of  the  above-given  information  has 
been  taken,  described  Tanganyika  thus:  "It  filled  us 
with  admiration,  with  wonder  and  delight.  Beyond  the 
short  foreground  of  rugged  and  precipitous  hill-fold,  down 
which  the  footpath  painfully  zigzags,  a  narrow  plot  of 
emerald  green  shelves  gently  towards  a  ribbon  of  ghsten- 
ing  yellow  sand,  here  bordered  by  sedgy  rushes,  there, 
clear  and  cleanly  cut  by  the  breaking  wavelets.  Farther 
in  front  stretches  an  expanse  of  the  Ughtest,  softest 
blue,  from  thirty  to  thirty-five  miles  in  breadth,  and 
sprinkled  by  the  east  wind  with  crescents  of  snowy  foam. 
It  is  bounded  on  the  other  side  by  tall  and  broken  walls 
of  purple  hill,  flecked  and  capped  with  pearly  mist,  or 
standing  sharply  pencilled  against  the  azure  sky.  To 
the  south  lie  high  bluff  headlands  and  capes;  and  as 
the  eye  dilates  it  falls  on  little  outlying  islets,  speckling 
a  sea  horizon.  Villages,  cultivated  lands,  and  frequent 
canoes  of  the  fishermen  give  a  something  of  life,  of 
variety,  of  movement  to  the  scenery." 

Hore,  another  of  the  careful  and  accurate  African 
explorers,  who  visited  the  lake  in  1880,  says:  "I  have 
never  witnessed  such  wondrous  cloud-scenery  and  majes- 
tic effects  of  thunder  and  lightning  as  on  Tanganyika." 
The  lake  was  for  a  long  time  one  of  the  many  African 
puzzles.  The  general  conformation  of  the  country  not 
unnaturally  led  the  first  European  visitors  to  assume  that 
it  emptied  northward  and  was  a  part  of  the  great  Nile 
water  system.  Others  argued  that  it  must  have  an  outlet 
to  the  south  and  contribute  to  the  Zambesi  basin.  But 
eventually  it  was  determined  conclusively  that  what- 


**CAPE    TO    CAIRO"  295 

ever  water  leaves  it  goes  from  about  the  middle  of  its 
western  shore  and  reaches  the  Kongo  River.  Yet  this 
outflow  is  not  constant,  being  dependent  upon  the  rain- 
fall and  the  consequent  rise  of  the  lake's  surface.  At 
times  there  is  actually  no  flow  at  all  from  Tanganyika. 

From  Ujiji  on  Tanganyika,  where  the  proposed  railway 
is  to  leave  that  lake,  to  the  approximate  point  where  it 
is  to  strike  Lake  Victoria  Nyanza  is  a  distance,  as  the 
crow  flies,  of  about  four  hundred  miles.  Yet  when  we 
remember  that  the  former  is  twenty-seven  hundred  feet 
above  sea-level,  while  the  latter  is  somewhere  about  four 
thousand  feet,  and  that  the  intervening  distance  forms 
the  watershed  between  the  Nile  and  the  Kongo  basins, 
it  need  not  be  said  that  those  four  hundred  miles  pre- 
sent some  very  pretty  problems  for  engineers  in  sur- 
veying the  line  and  for  contractors  in  building  it.  It 
is  probable  that  the  traveller  by  train  on  the  Cape  to 
Cairo  Railway  will  mark  a  distinct  difference  in  the 
scenery  along  the  shores  of  these  two  great  bodies  of 
water,  Tanganyika  and  Victoria  Nyanza.  Both  will  be 
declared  rugged  and  grand,  but  the  latter  will  be  re- 
marked for  the  richest  examples  of  tropical  vegetation 
to  be  seen  anywhere.  The  many  islands  along  the  coast 
are  said  to  be  clothed  with  forests  and  fringed  along  the 
shore  with  papyrus  or  low  jungle.  Its  surface  is  quite 
twice  that  of  Tanganyika,  although  it  is  some  two  hun- 
dred miles  less  in  length;  its  average  breadth  is  two 
hundred  and  twenty  miles. 

It  is  a  remarkable  thing  in  African  physical  geography 
that  three  such  great  lakes  as  Victoria  Nyanza,  Tangan- 
yika, and  Nyasa  (over  three  hundred  and  fifty  miles 


296  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

long),  less  than  fifteen  degrees  of  latitude  from  the 
northern  end  of  the  first  to  the  southern  end  of  the  third, 
and  five  degrees  of  longitude  sufficing  to  include  them 
all,  east  and  west,  should  be  so  absolutely  independent 
of  one  another  as  they  are.  It  was  a  most  natural  mis- 
take for  early  explorers  to  assume  that  they  were  con- 
nected, and  this  goes  a  good  way  towards  explaining  the 
persistency  of  the  statement  that  the  sources  of  the  Nile 
were  "somewhere  between  ten  degrees  north  and  twenty 
degrees  south  latitude."  Yet  these  three  large  bodies  of 
water  send  their  overflow  in  three  directions  until  they 
reach  the  ocean  at  points  separated  from  one  another 
by  thousands  of  miles  of  seacoast.  Victoria  Nyanza  is 
the  life  of  the  Nile,  a  tributary  of  the  Mediterranean; 
Tanganyika  contributes  to  the  Kongo  and  by  that  river 
to  the  south  Atlantic;  Nyasa  sends  a  stream  to  the  Zam- 
besi River,  and  thus  its  waters  reach  the  Indian  Ocean. 
But  a  small  patch  of  paper  will  cover  all  three  on  a  map 
of  fairly  good  scale,  and  although  we  cannot  exactly 
say  that  the  third,  Nyasa,  is  on  the  route  of  the  Cape  to 
Cairo  Railway,  it  is  but  a  comparatively  short  distance 
from  the  main  line  and  is  sure  to  be  included  in  the 
itinerary  of  the  traveller  who  uses  that  railway  for  the 
purpose  of  enlarging  his  knowledge  of  this  little  world 
by  personal  observation,  or  the  tourist  who  must  see 
all  there  is  to  be  seen,  or  the  commercial  man  who 
follows  his  ever-expanding  business  into  the  remotest 
corners  of  the  earth. 

Already  there  are  built  connecting  lines  with  the  main 
trxmk  line  of  the  Cape  to  Cairo.  From  Lourengo  Mar- 
ques, the  capital  of  the  Portuguese  State  of  East  Africa, 


*'CAPE    TO    CAIRO"  297 

a  line  is  in  operation  to  Pretoria,  and  this  city  is  to  be 
connected  with  the  main  line.  In  German  South  West 
Africa  a  short  line  is  open  from  Walfish  Bay  (British) 
to  Windhoek,  and  this  is  to  be  pushed  on  to  the  frontier 
at  Rietfontein  and  through  Bechuanaland  to  the  tnmk 
line.  Another  line  has  been  constructed  across  German 
East  Africa  from  Zanzibar,  on  the  coast,  to  Ujiji  on  Lake 
Tanganyika.  Yet  another  line  was  completed  while 
writing  this,  and  there  is  now  furnished  means  of  rapid 
communication  between  Mombasa,  on  the  southeastern 
coast  of  British  East  Africa,  and  the  northern  end  of 
Lake  Victoria  Nyanza,  much  needed  strategically  and 
industrially.  Whether  or  not  the  line  which  has  been 
talked  of  from  the  Cape  to  Cairo  at  Khartum  through 
Abyssinia  to  a  port  of  French  Somaliland,  and  possibly 
to  the  British  SomaU  Coast  Protectorate,  is  to  be  car- 
ried into  execution  with  reasonable  speed  is  a  question 
that  this  writer  confesses  he  has  no  right  to  answer;  but 
it  probably  will  be  done.  Then,  although  it  is  some- 
what outside  the  purview  of  this  chapter,  there  is  the 
great  east  and  west  trunk  line  across  Northern  Africa 
which,  so  it  is  said,  German  promoters  intend  to  build 
from  Alexandria  to  Morocco.  The  fact  that  it  would 
connect  with  the  Cape  to  Cairo  Railway  is  the  reason 
for  mentioning  it  here;  but,  as  an  economic  factor,  it 
has  already  been  discussed  in  an  earlier  chapter. 

The  pushing  forward  from  Cape  Colony  of  this  Cape 
to  Cairo  line  has  given  the  most  remarkable  activity  to 
development  throughout  the  whole  of  the  British  South 
African  colonies,  and  it  cannot  but  have  had  an  influence 
in  achieving  the  Union.    Already  territory  is  opened  that 


298  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

is  rich  in  many  things  —  grain,  fruits,  live  stock,  minerals 
are  but  a  few  of  these — and  passengers  are  now  "booked" 
from  Cape  Town  for  some  two  thousand  miles,  or  about 
one-third  the  total  distance  which  separates  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope  from  the  Mediterranean  at  Alexandria. 
The  equipment  is  a  sort  of  compromise  between  the  very 
exclusive  old-time  English  railway  "carriage"  and  the 
thoroughly  open,  democratic  "coach"  of  our  American 
railroads;  that  is  to  say,  the  "guard,"  who  is  the  Ameri- 
can "conductor,"  has  access  to  all  parts  of  the  trains  that 
run  any  considerable  distance,  and  that  too  without  im- 
perilling his  life  by  creeping  along  the  "running-board." 
Usually  there  is  a  narrow  corridor,  well-lighted,  along 
one  side  of  the  car,  with  a  lobby  at  each  end,  onto 
which  open  the  lavatories  and  through  which  a  person 
can  pass  by  doors  into  the  next  car.  From  this  corridor 
open  the  compartments,  with  two  broad  seats  across  the 
car  and  intended  to  accommodate  three  or  four  persons 
each;  of  course  one  set  must  sit  "back  to  the  engine." 
When  it  is  a  through  train  sometimes  these  seats  are 
convertible  into  beds,  the  backs  lifting  up  and  held 
firmly  and  rigidly  in  place  by  strong  springs  which  come 
out  from  the  woodwork.  There  are  thus  four  "athwart- 
ship"  berths,  and  if  it  be  a  first-class  or  second-class 
carriage,  there  is  an  attendant  who  supplies,  for  a  reason- 
able fee,  the  necessary  sheets,  blankets,  and  pillows. 
Third-class  passengers  (and,  as  in  the  British  Isles,  these 
are  by  far  the  most  numerous)  have  to  provide  for  them- 
selves. The  Pullman  sleeping-car,  with  longitudinal 
("fore  and  aft")  berths  may  be  found  on  some  trains, 
but  we  have  not  heard  of  them. 


*'CAPE    TO    CAIRO*'  299 

In  the  plainer  carriages  for  third-class  passengers, 
especially  when  on  a  long  run,  there  is  an  aisle  through 
the  middle  of  the  car,  with  seats  arranged  on  both  sides 
in  much  the  same  way  as  our  own;  but  these  are  not 
upholstered,  yet  they  are  said  to  be  very  comfortable. 

Ample  provision  is  made  for  getting  food,  because 
dining-cars  (often  called  "restaurant  cars")  are  attached 
to  all  trains  making  a  long  run,  and  these  are  graded 
so  that  the  purses  of  all  classes  of  passengers  are  con- 
sidered. Those  who  have  been  fortunate  enough  to 
travel  by  the  "Cape  to  Cairo"  trains  in  the  South 
African  Union  speak  well  of  the  dining-car  service 
both  as  to  the  character  of  the  food  supplied  and  the 
reasonable  charge  for  meals;  while  the  scale  of  "tips" 
would  probably  cause  the  waiters  in  the  American 
dining-cars  to  ignore  calmly  the  proffered  "thruppence" 
or  accept  scornfully  the  extravagant  shilling.  There  are, 
too,  excellent  restaurants  in  the  large  stations  where,  at 
convenient  times  during  the  day,  a  stop  is  made  of  suflS- 
cient  duration  to  enable  the  passengers  to  eat  a  meal  in 
comfort. 

There  is  one  phase  of  this  South  African  railway 
travelling  which  should  be  carefully  noted  by  strangers, 
and  that  is  the  extraordinary  variation  between  the 
maximum  temperature  during  the  afternoon,  from 
noon  imtil  three  o'clock,  and  the  minimum  from  mid- 
night until  daybreak,  both  winter  and  summer.  The 
heat  is  often  stifling  and  the  glare  most  tr>'ing  when 
the  sun  is  high,  but  as  soon  as  the  sun  sets  the  tem- 
perature begins  to  drop  and  the  passenger  who  has 
sweltered  and  gasped  during  the  afternoon  now  finds 


300  AFRICA    TO-DAY 

himself  shivering  with  cold.  The  reason  for  this  is  that 
the  radiation  from  the  veld  is  phenomenally  rapid,  but 
the  traveller  should  accept  the  fact  and  provide  him- 
self with  two  sets  of  clothing:  one  diaphanous,  as  for 
the  equator;  the  other  warm  and  heavy,  as  for  a  polar 
expedition. 

If  we  leave  Africa  with  this  paragraph  relating  to 
railway  travel,  it  seems  to  be  reasonably  appropriate. 
The  linking  together  of  the  various  sections  of  the  land 
with  these  exponents  of  modern  civilisation  is  probably 
as  indicative  of  what  this  great  continent  is  to  be  as 
anything  which  could  be  chosen;  and  that  there  is  a 
great  future  in  store  for  Africa  cannot  be  questioned. 
To-day  is  a  period  of  transition  for  most  of  the  conti- 
nent; in  but  a  comparatively  small  part  can  we  truly 
say  that  conditions  are  permanently  established,  and 
just  what  the  political,  social,  and  industrial  conditions 
in  other  parts  are  to  be  depends  entirely  upon  the 
measure  of  wisdom  or  indiscretion  displayed  by  the 
governments  of  those  European  nations  that  are  now 
exercising  Protectorate  rights  over  virtually  the  whole 
land.  The  Coming  Africa  will  have  to  be  reckoned 
with  seriously,  but  it  will  not  be  the  native  African 
who  measures  the  terms  of  that  reckoning.  It  seems 
sad  to  think  that,  in  the  whole  of  the  second  continent 
in  size,  there  is  scarcely  an  acre  left  to  the  exclusive 
control  of  the  aborigines. 


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A  List  of  Books  and  references  to  other  sources  of  information 
which  may  be  useful 

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Twelve  Months'  Journey   from   Djibuti    to   Cape   Verde. 

2  vols.     A.  Henry  Savage  Landor,  1907. 
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Hugh  Murray,  1830;  reprinted  1840. 
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301 


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2  vols.    Edward  William  Lane,  1836,  1871. 
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Frank  Vincent,  1895. 
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Latimer,  1898. 
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(Bohn's  Library),   1850. 
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In  Darkest  Africa.    Sir  Henry  Morton  Stanley,  1890. 
Fighting  the  Slave-hunters  in  Central  Africa.    Alfred  James  Swan, 

1910. 
The  British  Mission  to  Uganda  in  1893.    Sir  Gerald  [Herbert] 

Portal,  1894. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  303 

On  Safari:    Big  Game  Hunting  in  British  East  Africa.    Abel 

Chapman,   1908. 
My  African  Journey.    Right  Hon.  Winston  Spencer  Churchill, 

1908. 
Camera  Adventures   in   the  African   Wilds.     Arthur  Radclyffe 

Dugmore,  1910. 
In  Africa:    Hunting  Adventures   in   the  Big  Game  Country. 

John  T.  McCutcheon,  19 10. 
Hunting  in  British  East  Africa.     Percy  C.  Madeira,  1909. 
Man-eaters  of  Tsavo  and  Other  Blast  African  Adventures.    J.  H. 

Patterson,   1907. 
The  Land  of  the  Lion.    W.  S.  Rainsford,  1909. 
African  Game-trails.    Theodore  Roosevelt,  1910. 
To   Abyssinia,   through  an    Unknown  Land.      Chauncy   Hugh 

Stigand,  1910. 
France  in  North  Africa.    T.  W.  Balch,  1906. 
Roman  Africa:     Archaeological  Walks   in  Algeria   and   Timis. 

Gaston  Boissier,  1899. 
White  Man's  Africa.     Poultney  Bigelow,  1898. 
Monkeyfolk  of  South  Africa.     F.  W.  Fitzsimmons,  191 1 
Lassooing  Wild  Animals  in  Africa.     Guy  H.  Scull,  1911. 
The  Engineer  in  South  Africa :  a  Review  of  the  Industrial  Situation 

in  South  Africa  after  the  War  and  a  Forecast  of  the  PossibiU- 

ties  of  the  Country.     [James]  Stafford  Ransome,  1903. 
The  South  African  Natives :  the  Progress  and  Present  Condition. 

Edited  by  the  South  African  Native  Races  Committee,  1909. 
Britain's  Title  in  South  Africa ;  or  the  Story  of  Cape  Colony  to  the 

Days  of  the  Great  Trek.    James  Cappon,  1901. 
London  to  Lady  smith  vi<i  Pretoria.     Winston  Churchill,  1900. 
Rights  and  Wrongs  of  the  Transvaal  War.    Edited  by  T.  Cook, 

1902. 
England  and  South  Africa.     E.  J.  Gibbs,  1887. 
Dr.  Jameson's  Raid :  its  Causes  and  Consequences.    Rev.  James 

King,  1896. 
Story  of  South  Africa  (Cape  Colony,  Natal,  Orange  Free  State, 

South  Africa  Republic).     Story  of  the  Nations  Series,  1894. 
Briton  and  Boer :  both  Sides  of  the  South  African  Question.    Right 

Hon.  James  Bryce  and  others,  1900. 
Breath  of  the  Veldt.  J.  G.  Millars,  1899. 
The  Country  of  the  Dwarfs.    Paul  Du  Chaillu,  1903. 


304  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Jungle  Folk  of  Africa.    R.  H.  Milligan,  1908. 

The  Niger  and  the  West  Sudan.    A.  J.  N.  Tremeame,  1910, 

The  Kairwan,  the  Holy :    Scenes  in  Muhammedan  Africa.    A.  A. 

Boddy. 
Lake  Regions  of  Central  Africa.    R.  F.  Burton. 
Travels  through  Central  Africa.    Ren6  Cailli6. 
Dr.  Livingstone's  Seventeen  Years'  Exploration  and  Adventures  in 

the  Wilds  of  Africa.     Edited  by  J.  H.  Coombs. 
Narrative  of  Travels  and  Discoveries  in  Northern  Central  Africa. 

2  vols.    D.  Denham  and  H.  Clapperton. 
Travels  and  Researches  among  the  Lakes  and  Mountains  of  Eastern 

and  Cetitral  Africa.    J.  F,  Elton. 
The  Heart  of  Africa.     2  vols.     G.  H.  Schweinfurth. 
How  I  Crossed  Africa.     2  vols.     Serpa  Pinto. 
Travels  and  Adventures  in  Africa.    J.  H.  Speke  and  J.  A.  Grant. 
Coomassie  and  Magdala:  the  Story  of  Two  British  Campaigns  in 

Africa.    H.  M.  Stanley. 
How  I  Found  Livingstone.    2  vols.    H.  M.  Stanley. 
Through  the  Dark  Continent.     2  vols.    H.  M.  Stanley. 
On  the  South  African  Frontier;  the  Adventures  of  an  American 

in  Mashonaland  and  Matabeleland.     1899. 
South  Africa  of  Today.    F.  E.  Younghusband,  1898. 
South  Africa  and  the  Transvaal  War.     6  vols.     L.  Creswicke, 

1900-01. 
Cecil  Rhodes:  a  Study  of  a  Career.    H.  Hensman,  1901. 
The  Moorish  Empire:  an  Historical  Epitome.    B.  Meaken,  1899. 
The  Land  of  the  Moors.    B.  Meaken,  1901. 
Portuguese  Expedition  to  Abyssinia  in  1 541-1542.     M.  de  Castan- 

hose. 
History  of  the  Civilization  of  Africa  by  Alien  Races.    Sir  Harry 

Hamilton  Johnston,   1899. 
Ancient  Remains  of  Rhodesia.    Richard  Nicklin  Hall  and  W.  G. 

Neal,  1902. 
Africa  from  South  to  North  through  Marotseland.     2  vols.    Alfred 

St.  Hill  Gibbons,  1904. 
Sea-Wolves  of  the  Mediterranean.    Edward  Hamilton  Curry,  1910. 
The  Nile  Quest.     Sir  H.  H.  Johnston. 
Morocco :  painted  by  A.  S.  Forrest,  described  by  S.  L.  Bensusan, 

1904. 
Life  in  Morocco  and  Glimpses  Beyond.    Budge tt  Meaken,  1905. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  305 

The  Congo:  a  Report  of  the  Commission  of  Enquiry  appointed 

by  the  Congo  Free  State  Government,  1906. 
Africa  and  the  American  Flag.    Lieut.  Andrew  Hull  Foote  (U.  S. 

Navy),  1862. 
Modern  Egypt.     2  vols.    Earl  Cromer,  1908. 
The  Story  of  the  Congo  Free  State.    Henry  Wellington  Wack,  1905. 
Liberia.     2  vols.     Sir  H.  H.  Johnston,  1906. 
In  Morocco  with  General  D'Amande.    Reginald  Rankin,  1908. 
The  Truth  about  Morocco.     M.  Aflalo,  1904. 
The  Egyptian  Sudan:    its  History  and  Monuments.     2   vols. 

E.  A.  Wallis  Budge,  1907. 
Mahdism  and  the  Egyptian  Sudan.     Maj.  F.  R.  Wingate,  1891. 
The  Passing  of  the  Shereefian  Empire.    E.   Ashmead-Bartlett, 

1910. 
In  the  Grip  of  the  Nyika.    Lt.-Col.  J.  H.  Patterson,  1909. 
With  Kitchener  to  Khartum.     G.  W.  Steevens,  1898. 
Ten  Years  in  Equatorial  Africa  and  the  Return  with  Emin  Pasha. 

Maj.    Gaetano   Casati,    translated    by    the   Hon.    Mrs.   J. 

Randolph  Clay,  1891. 
Morocco :  its  People  and  Places.     2  vols.     Edmondo  de  Amicis, 

translated  by  Maria  Homor  Lansdale,  1897. 
The  Gold  Coast  Past  and  Present.     George  Macdonald,  1898. 
History  of  the  Emigrant  Boers  in  South  Africa.     George  McCall 

Theal,  1888. 
A  Search  for  Winter  Sunbeams.    Samuel  S.  Cox. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abydos,  124. 

Abyssinia,  149;  Christianity  in, 
23;  development,  152;  physical 
geography,  151. 

Afar  region.  East  Africa,  147. 

Africa,  American  interest  in,  xi, 
263;  attention  to,  x;  circum- 
navigation of,  is;  conditions 
in,  xi;  crossed  in  1550,  23;  de- 
velopment, 18;  divided  among 
European  nations,  235;  emer- 
gence from  darkness,  20;  first 
impressions,  4;  for  colonists, 
239;  for  sportsmen,  245;  maps, 
18;  mysterious  land,  2;  Na- 
ture's works  in,  6;  oases,  73; 
present  political  divisions,  233; 
the  name,  xiv. 

Africa  Portugesa,  xv. 

Africa  Propria,  xiv. 

African  Lakes,  296. 

African  slave  trade,  255. 

Akka  Duimeni,  quoted,  36. 

Alexandria,  116. 

Algeria,  42;  history,  43. 

Al-Kebutan,  xv. 

America  and  Barbary  corsairs, 
250;  and  African  slave  trade, 
255;  American  protectorate 
over  Liberia,  172. 

American  interest  in  Africa,  xi, 
263. 

Amins,  Kabyle  chiefs,  33. 


Ancient  sacrifice  at  Nile's  rise,  114. 

Angell,  Norman,  "The  Great 
Illusion,"  135. 

Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan,  130,  137; 
archaeology,  141;  crops,  140; 
faciUties  for  travel,  138;  in- 
habitants, 137;  joint  admini- 
stration, 136;  railways,  139; 
steamboats  on  Nile,  140. 

Angola  (Portuguese),  24,  157,  185. 

Apes'  Hill,  5. 

Aphirika,  xiv. 

Arabia  Felix,  xv. 

Arabs,  49,  54;  changed  geographi- 
cal names,  xvi. 

Araglis,  missionary,  24. 

Ascension  Island,  281. 

Ashmun,  Jehudi  (see  Liberia), 
171. 

Asia,  attention  to,  x. 

"Aspects  of  Islam"  quoted,  105. 

Assouan  dam,  112. 

Aston,  John,  his  edition  of  "Sir 
John  Maimdeville,"  8. 

Athos,  "Egyptian  Venus,"  125. 

Atlas  Mountains,  39. 

Attention  to  Africa  and  Asia,  x. 

Azores,  13. 

Bab-el-Mandeb,  Straits  of,  5. 
Baker,  Sir  Samuel  White,  11 1,  292. 
Barbary,  xv. 
Barbary  corsairs,  2,  250. 


309 


310 


INDEX 


Barca,  see  Tripoli,  44. 

Barotseland,  210. 

Barrage  at  Nile  Delta,  112. 

Bast  (Bubastis),  Festival  of,  118. 

Basutoland,  198. 

Bazehah,  name  for  Africa,  xiv. 

Belgian  Kongo,  conditions  in,  273; 

negroes,  23. 
Belgians  in  Katanga,  133. 
Belgium,  xii;  began  "grab  game," 

239- 

Beltrame,  missionary,  25. 

Beni-Hassan,  grottoes  of,  124. 

B6thencourt,  Jean  de,  13. 

Beyond  Khartum,  126. 

Bibliography,  none  complete,  x. 

Billd  es-Suddn,  "Country  of  the 
Blacks,"  127. 

Break  in  intercourse  between 
West  and  East,  11. 

Breto,  missionary,  23. 

British  East  Africa,  153;  railways, 
154;   pygmies,  155. 

British  Gold  Coast  Colony,  173; 
monotonous  forests,  174;  rail- 
ways, 174. 

British  Somaliland,  148. 

British  South  African  Company, 
210. 

Bruce,  James,  23. 

Bubastis  (Bast),  Festival  of,  118. 

Bunbury,  E.  H.,  10. 

Bushmen,  200. 

Bushongo  nation,  268;  "Throw- 
ing Knife,"  269. 

Cairo,    "Arabian    Nights,"    96; 

dancing-girls,     98;      old,     117; 

point  of  departure  for  Nile  trip, 

n8;   women  of,  96. 
Cambyses,  7,  iii. 


Camel,  "the  ship  of  the  desert,"  6. 

Canary,  the  "Fortunate,"  Isles, 
13,  278. 

Cape  of  Good  Hope,  Province 
of,  191;  flora  and  fauna,  193; 
agriculture,  194;  commxmica- 
tions,  195. 

Cape  to  Cairo  Railway,  285;  con- 
necting railways,  296;  general 
sketch  of,  290;  suggestions  to 
travellers,  299;   trains,  298. 

Cape  Town,  6. 

Cape  Verd  Islands,  280. 

Caravan  routes,  75. 

Caspian  Sea,  "connected  with 
Baltic,"  6. 

Castro,  missionary,  23. 

Catabathmos,  xvi. 

Cataracts,  Nile,  119,  125. 

Central  Africa,  political  divisions, 
127. 

Chad,  Lake,  128. 

Character  of  Early  Explorers,  22. 

China,  x,  xi. 

Christian  propaganda,  24. 

Circvunnavigation  of  Africa,  15. 

Civilisation  in  Africa,  ancient,  20. 

"Cleopatra's  Needles,"  116. 

Colenso,  Bishop  of  Natal,  28. 

"Coming  Africa,"  264. 

Commencement  of  modem  explo- 
ration, xi,  20. 

"Complete  System  of  Geography, 
etc.,"  19. 

Conditions  in  China,  xi. 

Connaught,  Duke  of,  on  Rhodesia, 
213. 

Convent  of  the  Virgin ,  Coptic,  1 23 .       \ 

Cooley,  W.  D.,  English  geog- 
rapher, 24. 

Coptic  Convent  of  the  Virgin,  123. 


INDEX 


311 


Cosmopolitan  Egypt,  99. 

Cox,  Samuel  S.,   "A  Search  for 

Winter  Sunbeams,"  50. 
Crossing  of  Africa  in  1550,  23. 
Crusades,   apathy   of   Spain   and 

Portugal,  12. 

Dancing-girls,  Cairo,  98. 

Dahabeeyah,  121. 

Dahlak  archipelago,  146. 

Dahomey,  177. 

Damietta,  118. 

Delta  barrage,  Nile,  112. 

Denham,  Major,  18. 

Dervishes,  134. 

Desert,  physical  appearance,  65; 

inhabitants  of,  76. 
Development  in  Africa,  18. 
Diaz,  Bartholomew,  rounds 

Africa,  14. 
Discovery  of  Nile's  sources,  no. 
Duke  of  Connaught  on  Rhodesia, 

213. 
Duparquet's  expedition  from 

Walfish  Bay,  26. 
Dutch,  colonists,  27;  E.  I.  Co., 

192. 

East   Africa,    included    territory, 

144;   ^yika,  158. 
Egypt  and  Babylonia  and  Syria, 

81;    British    control,    xii;    for 

invalids,  95;    now,  94. 
Egypt  Marmorica,  xvi. 
Egyptian  history,  80;    peasants, 

98;    Sudan,  conquest  of,   134; 

Venus,  "Athos,"  125. 
Egyptians,  their  origin,  82. 
El-ber,  xiv. 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  shares  in  slave 

ezi}ediUon,  256. 


Emin  Pasha  (Edouard  Schnitzer), 
relief  of,  17. 

English  missionaries,  their  explo- 
rations, 27, 

Equatoria,  17. 

Erastothenes,  15;  his  description 
of  Nile,  III. 

Eritrea,  144;  Afar  region,  147; 
Dahlak  archipelago,  146;  in- 
habitants, 147;   Masawah,  148. 

Ethiopia,  name  associated  with 
Africa,  149. 

Ethiopian  Kingdom,  archaeologi- 
cal research  in,  142. 

Etymology  of  "Africa,"  xv. 

European,  immigration,  215; 
protectorates,  234. 

False  Bay,  6. 

Faria-y-Sousa,  explorer,  xv. 

Fayimi,  121. 

Fezzan,  see  Tripoli,  44. 

First  impressions  of  Africa,  4. 

Fiske,  John,  22, 

France  in  Africa,  238. 

French,  Equatorial  Africa,  166; 
Guinea,  169;  Huguenots  in 
South  Africa,  192;  Ivory  Coast 
Colony,  173;  Somaliland,  148; 
treatment  of  Algerines,  62. 

French  and  German  agreement  as 
to  Morocco,  etc.,  ss,  34,  38. 

French  possessions  in  West  Africa, 
163;  towns,  154;  flora,  165. 

Gambia,  167. 
Game  Reserves,  246. 
"Garden  of  Allah,  The,"  67-69. 
Gebet  el-Teyr,  cliffs  of,  123. 
German  East  Africa,  155;  railways, 
156;  South  West  Africa,  188. 


312 


INDEX 


Germany's  action  in  Morocco,  37; 

in  Africa,  238. 
Ghizeh  Palace,  loi. 
Clave,  explorer,  291. 
Godinha,  missionary,  24. 
Gongalves,    Antonio,   first    negro 

slaves,  16. 
Goodrich,    Rear-Admiral    C.    F., 

quoted,  265,  273. 
Gouritz,  R.  W.,  14. 
Grant,       President,      arbitration 

Great  Britain  and  Portugal,  168. 
Gray,  Major  W.,  explorer,  166. 
Great  Britain  in  Egypt,  xii. 
"Great   Illusion,   The,"    Norman 

Angell,  135. 
Greeks  in  Africa,  7. 
Greeley,  R.  R.  "Liberia,"  171. 
Griqualand,  East  and  West,  205. 

Hanno,  14. 

Harem,  women  of,  59. 

Hausa  people,  176. 

Hawkins,  Sir  John,  slave  trade,  256. 

Hekataeus,  map  of  Africa,  500  B.C., 

18. 
Herodotus,  9,  64,  118,  122. 
Hesperian  Sea,  xiv. 
Hichens,    Robert,   "The    Garden 

of  Allah,"  67-69. 
History,   present    characteristics, 

xiii. 
Homeric  notion  of  flat  earth,  15. 
"How    I    Found    Livingstone," 

H.  M.  Stanley,  17. 
Howling  Dervishes,  116. 

Important  "finds,"  102. 

"In    Darkest    Africa,"    H.    M. 

Stanley,  17. 
Indentured  servitude,  259. 


Inquisition  in  Portugal,  23, 
International  agreements,   241. 
Iphrica,  xiv. 
Isis,  temple  near  El-Mansoorah, 

118. 
Italian  Somaliland,  148. 
Italian  Turkish  War,  191 1,  45. 
Italy,  Tripoli  and  Abyssinia,  240. 

Jaine,  missionary,  24. 

Jameson,  C.  D.,  conditions  in 
China,  xi. 

Jesuit  mission,  first  in  Africa,  23. 

"Jesuit  Travels,"  23. 

Jews  in  Africa,  49,  57. 

John  II  of  Portugal,  14. 

John  III  of  Portugal,  23. 

Joint  administration  of  Anglo- 
Egyptian  Sudan,  136. 

Kabinda,  Portuguese    possession, 

183. 
Kabyles,  or  Berbers,  49-51;  their 

Amins,  or  chiefs,  52. 
Kamak,  83. 
Katanga,  132. 

Khalifa's  defeat  at  Omdurman,  135. 
Kitchener,  Field  Marshal,  Lord, 

IIS- 
Knoblesher,     Ignaz,     missionary 

up  Nile,  25. 
Kolouges,  49-58. 
Kongo  Free  State,  183. 
Kongo,    French,     180;     railways 

and  communications,  182. 
Kongo,  missions  in,  23. 
Kunene  River,  24. 
Kwaidas  of  Wunzerik,  77. 


Labyrinth,  121. 
Lacerde    y    Almeida,    F.    J. 
explorer,  24. 


de. 


INDEX 


313 


Language  problem  in  South  Africa, 

215- 

Latham,  R.  G.,  55. 

Lembobo  (Limpopo)  Moimtains, 
197. 

Liberia,  xi,  170;  American  Protec- 
torate, 172;  Ashmun,  J.,  171; 
Greeley,  R.  R.,  171. 

Libya,  xiv,  64. 

Libyan  Hills,  5. 

Livingstone,  D.,  xiii,  25;  Stanley's 
tribute  to,  29,  291. 

Livingstone   Mission,   origin,    28. 

Loti,  Pierre,  "La  Morte  de  Philae," 

Luxor,  119. 

Macdonald,  D.  B.,  "Aspects  of 

Islam,"  105. 
Machin,  Robert,  13. 
Mackay,  A.   M.,  news  of  Emin 

Pasha,  26. 
Mac  Leod,   Miss    Olive,   trip    to 

Mao  Kabi  River,  129. 
Madagascar  Island,  281. 
Madeira  Islands,  13,  276. 
Maghreb,  xiv. 
Maltese  in  Africa,  60. 
Manoel,  King  of  Portugal,  23. 
Mao  Kabi  River,  29. 
Maps  of  Africa,  18. 
Mare,  Infemum,  Magnimi,  xiv. 
Mariut,  Lake,  116. 
Mashonaland,  211. 
Matabeleland,  211. 
Maundeville,  Sir  John,  8. 
Mauretania,  leeches  and  vines,  10. 
Mauritius,  Island,  283. 
Mediterranean  shores,  5;  pirates, 

12. 
Mela,  Pomponius,  xvi. 


Meneleek,  King  of  Abyssinia, 
26,  149. 

Missionary,  effort,  30;  explora- 
tions, 25. 

Moeris,  Lake,  123. 

Moinier,  General,  35. 

Moniunents,  old,  unknown,  85. 

Moors,  in  Spain  and  their  expul- 
sion, 20,  49,  56. 

Moret,  Alexander,  80. 

Morocco,  33,  34,  40;  flora,  41. 

Mountains  of  the  Moon,  10,  18. 

Mozabites,  50,  60. 

Mozambique,  24. 

Mosilikatsze,  Zulu  chief,  211. 

Mulai  Hafid,  35. 

Miunmies,  102. 

"Narrative  of  Discovery  and 
Adventure,"  17. 

Nasamonians,  64. 

Natal,  195. 

Nature's  workings   in  Africa,   6. 

Negro  slavery,  opposition  to 
in  United  States,  260. 

Negroes,  50,  59,  218;  adapted  to 
Africa,  227;  alcohol,  230; 
artistic  ability,  223;  cannibal- 
ism, 225;  culture,  223;  effect 
of  European  civilisation,  228; 
polygyny,  224;  possibiUties  for, 
271;  physical  traits,  220;  reli- 
gion, 226. 

Nile,  6;  cataracts,  119;  delta  bar- 
rage, 112;  Erastothenes'  de- 
scription of,  iii;  mouths,  108; 
overflow,  effect  on  buildings,  84; 
rise,  its  importance,  114;  old 
measure,  113;  rivers,  no;  river 
steamboats,  120;  source,  dis- 
covery of,  no. 


3U 


INDEX 


Noble,  F.  P.,  explorer,  31. 

Northern  Africa,  32;  "Land  of 
Winter  Sunbeams,"  38;  peo- 
ples, 49- 

Nyasa,  Lake,  295. 

Nyasaland,  206. 

Nyika,  158;  native  dance,  159. 

Oases,  72,  73;  artificial,  73;  im- 
portant Saharan  and  Libyan, 
74;   trade  of,  75. 

Ohrwalder,  news  of  Emin  Pasha,  26. 

Old  Cairo,  117. 

Old  measure  of  Nile's  rise,  113. 

Old,  unknown  monuments,  85. 

Orange  Free  State,  200;  railways, 
201. 

"Origin  of  Aryans,"  55. 

Opposition  to  negro  slavery,  260. 

Pacheco,  Father,  missionary,   23. 

Paez,  Father,  missionary,  23. 

Park,  Mungo,  18,  131,  166. 

Partition  of  Africa,  265. 

"  People  of  the  Throwing  Knife," 
268. 

Peoples  of  Northern  Africa,  49. 

Peterman,  A.,  his  tribute  to  mis- 
sionaries, 25. 

Pharaonic  diplomacy,  83. 

Pharos,  island  and  lighthouse,  116. 

Pherio,  xv. 

Philae,  island  of,  125. 

Phoenicians,  xv,  7. 

Pinto,  Serpa,  explorer,  291. 

Pirates,  Mediterranean,  11. 

Political  aspects  in  Egypt,  108. 

Pompey's  Pillar,  117. 

Ports  of  entry,  ancient,  3. 

Portuguese,  blocked  in  effort  to 
reach  East  Indies,  21;  desire  to 


reach   Far  East,    11;    lead   in 

West  African   exploration,    12. 
Portuguese     East     Africa,     156; 

railways,  157. 
Portuguese  Guinea,  168. 
Portuguese    South    West    Africa, 

Province  of  Angola,  185. 
Posidonius,  15. 
Possibilities,  for  African  negroes, 

271;    for  Europeans  in   South 

Africa,  242. 
Prince  Henry  of  Portugal,  "The 

Navigator,"  14. 
Procession  of  the  Holy  Carpet,io3. 
Protestant  missions,  lack  of  early 

zeal,  26. 
Province  of  Cape  of  Good  Hope, 

191. 
Ptolemy,  xv,  10,  16. 
Pyramids,  91. 

Quadra,  23. 

Quaker  missions  in  Africa,  26. 

Rejaf  Hill,  25. 

Reunion,  Island  of,  282. 

Rhamadan,  fast,  105. 

Rhodes,  Cecil,  xiii. 

Rhodesia,  190,  207,  212. 

Rhodesian  teak,  208. 

Rio  d'  Oro,  14,  161. 

Roman  Catholic  missions,  25. 

Romans,  7. 

Roosevelt,    T.,    "African    Game 

Trails,"  248. 
Rosetta  and  "Rosetta  Stone,"  117. 
Rutsi  Country,  24. 

Sahara,  6,  64;  its  political  fate,  78. 
St.  Helena,  island,  280. 
St.  Matthews,  island,  281. 


INDEX 


315 


Sallust,  xvi. 

Schnitzer,  Edouard,  Emin  Pasha, 
17,  26. 

Scramble  for  Africa,  176,  235. 

Senussi,  78. 

Serpa  Pinto,  291. 

Seychelles,  islands,  283. 

Sherboro,  island,  14. 

Sierra  Leone,  14,  169. 

Slave  Coast,  175. 

Slave  trade,  256. 

Slaves  in  America,  216. 

Sokotra,  island,  284. 

Sources  of  the  Nile,  18. 

South  Africa,  for  Americans,  216; 
temperature  variations,  299. 

Spanish  Colony,  Rio  d'  Oro,  161; 
Muni,  180. 

Speke  and  Grant,  explorers,  292. 

Stanley,  H.  M.,  xiii,  292;  relief  of 
Emin  Pasha,  17;  tribute  to  Liv- 
ingstone, 29;  his  "How  I  Foimd 
Livingstone,"  17;  "In  Darkest 
Africa,"  17. 

Steevens,  G.  W.,  "With  Kitchener 
to  Khartum,"  134. 

Stormy  Cape,  Cape  of  Good 
Hope,  14. 

Strabo,  9. 

Sudan,  127. 

Suez  Canal,  no  locks,  4. 

Swaziland,  197. 

Talbot,  P.  A.,  129. 
Tanganyika,  lake,  293. 
Taylor,  Canon  Isaac,  55. 
Temples,  desecration  of,  89;   de- 
scription, 81. 
Teneriffe,  Peak  of,  279. 
"The  Coming  China,"  xi. 
"The  Dark  Continent,"  xii. 


"The  Garden  of  Allah,"  67. 

"The  Sea- Wolves  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean," 12. 

"The  Tomb  Robber,"  102. 

"The  Universal  History,"  xvii. 

Thebes,  119. 

Thinite  Dynasty,  81. 

"Throwing  Knife,"  people  of  the, 
268. 

Togoland,  175. 

Toka,  plateau,  24. 

Torday,  E.,  268. 

Transcontinental  railways,  286. 

Tripoli,  44,  240;  mastiffs  as 
watchmen,  61. 

Tuareks  (Wild  Berbers),  77. 

Tunis,  43. 

Turkey  in  Africa,  237. 

Turks  in  Africa,  49,  58. 

"Unexplored"  regions  of  the 
earth,  i. 

Union  of  South  Africa,  190. 

United  States  and  Christian 
missions,  263. 

Upper  Senegal  and  Niger,  prov- 
ince, 166. 

Valleys  in  the  desert,  65. 
Victoria  Falls,  24. 
Victoria  Nyanza,  lake,  295. 
Vischer,  Hanns,  67. 
Volga  River,  16. 

Wady  Haifa,  119. 

Walfish  Bay  (British),  187. 

Western  Africa,  political  divisions, 

161. 
White  Man's  Africa,  267. 
"With   Kitchener  to  Khartum," 

134. 


DATE  DUE 

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PRINTCO  IN  U.S.A. 

